ECM and Animal Shelter Partner for Children’s Cereal Drive

October 2, 2023

Matt Morris,

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Muskingum County has several local charity organizations that cater to different causes that are needed across the community.

Eastside Community Ministry and the Animal Shelter Society have teamed-up to gather support from each other’s donors by incentivizing discounts towards pet adoption for anyone willing to donate children’s cereal to ECM.

“So what we’re going to do for the entire month of October; drop off three boxes of cereal, either here at the shelter or at Eastside Community Ministry, and they will keep track and let us know. And then you will have a ‘$10 dollar off’ coupon to adopt a cat or dog here at our organization during the month of October. So everybody wins. Kids get cereal that they really like and then we get our animals out to really good homes. So it’s a win-win situation,” Animal Shelter Society Executive Director April Gibson said.

The Animal Shelter Society has over 125 dogs and cats at their facility and need to free up space, while ECM is seeing kids who are not getting breakfast.

Eastside Community Ministry Executive Director Jamie Trout has partnered with Gibson, performing many roles through different jobs for several years.

“A lot of people think it’s interesting that the Animal Shelter and Eastside Community Ministry can have a partnership but the truth is, is that Eastside takes care of animals and people and Miss April takes care of animals and people and so it just makes sense,” Trout said. “And so this was a great partnership and an opportunity for us to get cereal in. We are serving over 400 households a month, over 11,000 meals are going out of our little food pantry each and every month. And cereal we have to buy at cost and so we’re spending over a thousand dollars a month to provide cereal to those that are in need.”

Coupon recipients must go through the application and pet adoption process but the partnership helps share the needs of each organization and spread awareness to more people throughout the community.