January 23, 2008
Chili cook-off, bake sale to help fund Habitat home
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A chili cook-off and bake sale Feb. 1 at Purdue University will be a fundraiser for a Habitat for Humanity of Lafayette home to be built."Faculty and staff in the Office of Information Technology at Purdue are the cook-off's organizers, and the event is the first of several planned efforts to raise the $40,000 needed to construct a Habitat home, sponsored under the project name of, “Hab-ITaP” for Humanity.
"Purdue's chief information officer, Gerry McCartney, brought this idea of helping out Habitat for Humanity, and our employees in ITaP thought it was great," said Dan Schumacher, manager of infrastructure services and a lead organizer for the Habitat project. "ITaP is very customer-focused on the services we provide, and we get away from the nuts and bolts of keeping everything running sometimes and reach out in other ways. This is a great team-building activity for us in ITaP, and it's a tremendous outreach to the community."
The cook-off and bake sale, scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at University Church, 320 North St., is open to the public to participate as contestants or to eat for a minimum $5 donation. The meal will include a bowl of chili, crackers and a drink. Ingredients lists will be posted as an indicator of how spicy the chili concoctions are.
Organizers want to have 25 entries in the cook-off, and first- second- and third-place prizes will be awarded. Awards Unlimited Inc. has provided trophies. The deadline to sign up as a contestant is Monday (Jan. 28). To do so, contact Dixie Thomas at (765) 496-7246 or e-mail her at dlthomas@purdue.edu.
All items from the bake sale will be priced at $1.
A 30-person committee from ITaP, with several subcommittees, is working on several other projects to help raise the $40,000, Schumacher said. The committee meets monthly, with a goal of conducting some fundraising activity each month and a bigger activity once each quarter.
"We're going to keep pushing forward, whether it takes one year, two years or whatever it takes," Schumacher said.
A Texas Roadhouse night already is scheduled for March 3. A percentage of sales from the restaurant in Lafayette will go toward the project.
Writer: Jim Bush, (765) 496-2077, jsbush@purdue.edu
Source: Dan Schumacher (765) 494-4865, dschumacher@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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