MATA, Langdon & Emison Support Harvesters Community Food Network - 2011-04-26

In an ongoing partnership with an organization dedicated to stocking and assisting regional food banks across the state, the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys (MATA) recently launched this year's series of volunteer work days in conjunction with Harvesters-The Community Food Network.  This MATA effort was supported by Langdon & Emison and Jessica M. Agnelly, a firm attorney who was one of the volunteer leaders at the Kansas City location of Harvesters, where a dozen attorneys dedicated an afternoon of volunteer work and brought along a $2,500 donation to the organization on April 26.

This event marks the second food bank tour that the organization has conducted that involves both donations and volunteer hours in each city, through its charitable arm, Missouri Trial Lawyers Care (Mo-TLC). In the Kansas City area, Mo-TLC has also donated to Operation Breakthrough, Precious Doe Memorial Park, LEAP-Lawyers Encouraging Academic Performance, Lee’s Summit Education Theater Month, City Union Mission and the Wounded Warrior Project.  

Along with other firms in western Missouri, Langdon & Emison has collected a range of canned goods and food to be donated to the food bank at the end of the current drive. Other food banks targeted for donations are Central Missouri Food Bank in Columbia, St. Louis Area Food Bank, Southeast Missouri Food Bank in Cape Girardeau and Ozarks Food Harvest in Springfield. All are members of the Feeding America Network, formerly known as America’s Second Harvest, and serve as umbrella organizations for hundreds of non-profit agencies.  

Since her first year of law school, Jessica has been a member of MATA, which represents 1,300 trial lawyers who are dedicated to protecting the civil justice system and the right to trial by jury, safeguarding victims’ rights, promoting injury prevention, and disclosing information crucial to public health and safety. While a law student at UMKC, Jessica served as Vice President of the student MATA chapter during her second year and President in her third year.  Jessica has been actively involved in the MATA-Red Cross Emergency Response Team, Habitat for Humanity, Harvester’s Food Drive, MATA Women’s Lobby Day and has been a guest speaker at UMKC for the MATA student chapter.  She currently serves on the New Lawyers Committee and under the Public Outreach Committee as a co-chair of the Emergency Response Team. Jessica also has had the privilege to testify on behalf of MATA in favor of House Bill 171, which sought to protect the rights of renters when their homes are destroyed by natural disasters.

Harvesters has acted as a clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of food and related household products since 1979.  The organization has helped the greater Kansas City community by collecting food and household products from community and industry sources, distributing those products and providing nutrition services through a network of nonprofit agencies, and offering leadership and education programs to increase community awareness of hunger and generate solutions to alleviate hunger.  The Harvesters-Community Food Network provides food assistance to as many as 66,000 different people each week. Harvesters is a certified member of Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, serving all 50 states.