For C&S Wholesale Grocers’ seventh consecutive year of participating in Make a Difference Day, which this year occurred on Saturday, Oct. 24, over 500 of the company’s employees volunteered their time in communities across the country.

“Make A Difference Day is a wonderful demonstration of our employees taking action on behalf of our communities,” said C&S director of community involvement Gina Goff. “It is a great example of neighbors helping neighbors.”

Most of the C&S Make A Difference Day projects for 2009 aligned with the wholesaler’s social focus on the issue of hunger, and included serving dinner at the Friends of the Night People soup kitchen in Buffalo, N.Y.; constructing a lanai, assembling care packages and serving lunch at the Waianae Homeless Shelter in Waianae, Hawaii; painting, installing carpet and cubicle dividers, and replacing lighting and ceiling tiles at the Second Harvest Food Bank of San Joaquin County in Manteca, Calif.; packing food boxes for local senior citizens at the Weinberg Food Bank in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; beautification and green cleanup around Harvey Street in Suffield, Conn.; painting two transitional housing apartments for the Lighthouse Homeless Prevention & Support Shelter in Annapolis, Md.; and sprucing up the Cancer House of Hope and serving food to veterans at the Soldier’s Home in Westfield, Mass.

Taking place annually in October, Make A Difference Day is a national effort encouraging companies and individuals to volunteer in their communities.

Keene, N.H.-based C&S, which is the 12th-largest privately held company in the nation according to Forbes magazine, provides distribution services to about 4,600 retailers from its distribution centers in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Alabama, California and Hawaii.