ARVEST MILLION MEALS

Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust. Ms Whitney is in with his hair from our vest bank and we've got the million meals going on. How are we progressing.

We're doing great. We're halfway through our campaign. We have one month left to go. We've raised a lot of money so far. So for those of you who've made a donation, we want to say a big thank you. I know Mary Martha is going to put that money to great use, but we still haven't met our goal yet. And so I think the last time we were here we talked a little bit about it's our fifteen year anniversary and so strong yes, and so we want to raise fifteen percent more this year than we did last year.

Who's our food partner here in our area.

It's Mary Martha Outreach Catholic Charities.

Missy Wishall and her team are excellent partners in crime for us.

They do great work in this community.

And so we've been partnering with them for several years, and we're just proud of all the work that they do to feed our neighbors and community members here in Martlesville.

Now, with our best we've got quite a footprint here in Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma and.

All over the place.

Really, but this just doesn't help right here, and this helps everywhere. We have our best location.

Correct, we have over eighty food partners that we work with.

Lordy, Yes, if you make a donation here in Bartlesville or Dewey, it's going to stay here locally, But in those other communities, our other partners are working with them, and so if a donation is made in Fayeville, Arkansas, it stays in Fayeville, Arkansas, or if it's right here

That's what it's all about, you know, when we're here just taking business, taking care of business at our best. You're so much a part of our community. We see your workers everywhere and everything, so we know it's a handshake, it's an understanding. We all mesh, we all take together. We all know what's going on in our community, and if we see something that needs fixing, well, we identify it. And this is one of them that our vest is really tackled and tackled well for fifteen years.

Yes, sir, you know.

One of the things that we know about the communities that we serve in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas is that they're one of the highest in food insecurities in the nation. Oklahoma is rked fifth in the nation. Arkansas is even higher than that. And so we know that there's a need here and there's a lot of folks that don't know where their next meal is coming.

During the summertime.

Families are struggling to put food on the table for kids that are at home, and so this is an opportunity to support those families and those young people to be able to relieve some stress, be able to feel good about Hey, we know where the next mills coming. We don't have to make a decision whether we're going to pay the rent or buy food there's an opportunity there, and Misty and her group always do a great job of outreach to let people know that there's you know,

Now, Whitney, how can we go about making a donation to Mike and meals?

Absolutely well, there's three ways, so we try to make it as easy as possible. If you have time to come see as we love to see you and thank you for your donation. So you can stop by any of our three Bartlesville locations, they're happy to take your donation, or even in Dewey they would love to take your donation there. Or if you're our best customer, our our vest Go app, you can go and transfer money from your account into the r vest Go or into the donation.

Account.

Or you can go to RvEs dot com forward slash Million Meals and make a donation that way as well.

You know, if you're new in town, you haven't selected a financial institution, this is a great way to get started. How you say, hey, I want to help, and then by the way, what do you offer and they can help you out.

That way too.

Yeah, we would love to talk to you about your financial needs how we can help you. Know, that's our goal is really our mission here in Bartlesville and across the communities we serve are people helping people find financial

You know, when first came to town, that you're welcome wagon, as I call it, was. Your onboarding process was pretty cool. I've lived in a lot of different communities over my life, and usually it was just so, you know, vanilla playing everything else nothing. I come in here and it was very warm, very inviting, smile.

That was great.

I hadn't seen that in years, And the process was explained so well, and even with a thing called an app, which I was new to at that time, there was a great deal of patience explaining.

How that worked. And it was like, oh, well, this is pretty darn good. You know, feel kind of home here.

Well, we appreciate your business, Tom, and we appreciate anyone who's considering our vest.

You know, our goal is you know, we're part of this community.

You know, we live here, we work here, and we just we want to be able to serve others. That's the goal at our vest. That's our mission is to serve other people. So whether it's collecting to donations, or it's being able to welcome someone to town, or hey, you're really going through a hard.

Time and you need some advice.

We want to be that partner and we want to be that neighbor who helps you, and.

You are that neighbor in so many ways. Although Million Meals is our main.

Focus today, I was just in yesterday and there was some fundraising sale and going on and it looked delicious.

Yes, so we from time to time do bake sales during our one million Meals campaign.

Right now, we're there's one way to get you in the door.

Yes.

One of the things that's happening we're actually wrapping up today is our Silent Back the Basket auction that's happened over our east side location on Adam's Boulevard.

There's some really fun things it's a silent auction.

Feel free to go in and write down your bid and if you win, then we'll be able to get that we'll call you and get that basket to you. But there's a lot of fun things that they have over there, so you would, if you're interested, go take a look. I think they are cutting off all bids by two o'clock this afternoon, so you got a little bit more time to get to bid in.

Should you be run to lunch, yes, and while you're there, slip in a couple of bucks from Million Meals please, because that halfway is great. We'd like to be all the way there, just a little bit ahead of time so that no plate goes empty.

Absolutely, and you know, we'd love to be able to write the biggest check we've ever written to Mary Martha this year in twenty twenty five.

Our invest is a successful business in many ways. Forbes recognizes our best every year, sometimes on two or three, sometimes even four different lists.

It's amazing, really proud of the work that we do. But not only are we proud of the work we're doing, we're proud of the associates that work for us.

We have great.

People and one of the things. From time to time, our associates rank us one of the best.

Places to work and what I was thinking about.

And here in Oklahoma, and so we're very very proud of that recognition. But we're also just extremely proud that we have great people who are just as committed as the organization. They see the vision that our organization has to really be that community leader and that service provider, and so they really live out the mission every single day.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. So the website once again for folks who aren't familiar, let's get them acquainted with that so they can read up on Million Meals.

Sure, it's our vest dot com forward slash million Meals.

That's it. That's it simple. I can even do that, of course. Yeah, and of course, and if you're.

Not computer savvy, just just dropped by one of the branch locations and they will happily explain to you how it works and how you can help.

Absolutely. I also don't want to miss that.

You know, in no Wada we're also raising money and No Wada, if you're from Nowada, that is a different food partner. In Nowada County, it is Fishes and Loaves, and they're a food pantry that does.

A great job.

And so if you make a donation and No Wada, all of that money will go to that local food pantry.

And you can't miss the Arvest branch in No Water. It takes up pretty much a city block.

It does.

It does, and there's great people that work there and they would love.

To meet you and get to know you and see how they can help.

And so if you're in Nowada County and you want to know where our vest is, just go into downtown know Wada. You will see the sign. It's almost as big as life. Yes, you can't miss it. If you do, you need to see somebody about prescription glasses. But this is great so you can help out No Water in your community. Also in Bartlesfield Dewey we help Mary Martha and it's a great way to take care of home base and take care of people who might be falling

It's in the nation and about over fifteen percent of folks are concerned about where their next meal is coming. And so we want to again we just we don't want people to have to struggle through that that stress in their life. And so and I know Mary or I know Mary, Martha and Misty and her team don't want that same worry for people that they know exactly where they can get help.

I want to make an appeal to the pretty much anybody who's listening right now. You might have had a tough day in your life where you weren't too sure if you're going to have a meal or not.

You might have had a rough week.

Or a month, but can you imagine pretty much your current state extending for long periods like that now. I want you just to imagine that one day, or that one week, or that one month. Then imagine the people

Yeah.

I think one thing to know is if you're considering a donation, every little.

Bit helps it does even a dollar.

Correct, It doesn't have to be a large donation.

We know that some folks are they're getting food on the table, but maybe they're working paycheck to paycheck and right now it's a difficult time.

And they're chasing everything while they're being chased by everything.

So you know, I would just say that, you know, if you're considering giving, no donation is too small. We appreciate any time that you consider giving to the community and giving to Mary Martha. And so whether it's just a few cents or whether it's a fifty dollars check, anything is important, and we just want to say thank you so much for considering giving the today and even in the future to million miles.

Alrighty, hey Whitney, it's always a player. You got to come back and visit us here again.

I am one more time, and hopefully I all have a great update that says, because I think it's in the next few weeks, hopefully we'll have an update that says we're really close to that goal and we're going to meet it or exceed it.

I hope.

Whitney, thank you for coming in and thank you Forrvist Bank for providing a million meals to our area.

Mary Martha, We're so happy to be a part of the community.

Thank you, Thank you, folks. You've been watching and listening to our community connection.