More than 100 Southwest Gas employee volunteers and their families spent Saturday at Three Square Food Bank packing 1,475 bags of food weighing a combined 16,400 pounds, teaming up with the Vegas Golden Knights in a hands-on push against hunger in the Las Vegas Valley. The volunteers sorted donated food, packed produce and grocery items, and organized backpack meals bound for families across the region.
The gathering, reported by KLAS 8 News Now, paired more than 100 Southwest Gas employees and their families with the Vegas Golden Knights, the utility company's official natural gas partner. Chance, the team's mascot, and members of the Vegas Vivas also showed up to help the volunteers work through the day's haul of food.
A Partnership With Deep Roots
The event was organized under Southwest Gas' BLUE — Building Loves Up Everywhere — program, which encourages employees to volunteer their time with local nonprofits and uplift their communities, according to the station's report. It's not a one-off commitment: since 2016, the Southwest Gas Foundation has donated more than $90,000 to Three Square Food Bank, and company employees have separately given over $686,000 through FUEL for LIFE, the company's employee workplace giving program.
Beth Martino, president and CEO of Three Square Food Bank, said she was grateful for the organizations' service and their shared commitment to a hunger-free community, adding that Southwest Gas and its foundation have long supported the food bank's mission to end hunger in Southern Nevada. Southwest Gas President and CEO Justin Brown said the company works with the Golden Knights and Three Square to support people facing hunger year-round, noting that Three Square helps families, seniors and others throughout local communities.
A Growing Need Across Southern Nevada
The volunteer effort landed against a backdrop of worsening hunger numbers across the region. Feeding America's 2026 Map the Meal Gap study estimated that roughly 397,750 people — 16.6% of Southern Nevada's population — were food insecure, according to FOX5 Vegas. That figure marked an increase of more than 20,000 people from the previous year's estimate, and the rate itself climbed from 15.8% to 16.6% across Three Square's service area.
The same study found that 117,560 children in Southern Nevada live in food-insecure households — about one in four kids in the region. FOX5 Vegas also reported that Clark County accounts for 97% of the total food-insecure population in Southern Nevada, where residents miss an estimated 75.5 million meals every year. About two years earlier, Nevada Current reported that combined food insecurity rates across Clark, Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties had already climbed from 12% in 2022 to 14.7% in 2023. Nationally, Feeding America reported that nearly 48 million people, including 14 million children, experienced food insecurity in 2024.
Building On Past Collaborations
Kim Frank, Vegas Golden Knights Foundation president and chief community officer, said the Golden Knights organization joined Southwest Gas employees at Three Square to help provide meals for local families, calling the partnership a source of synergy and support for the Las Vegas community. The team and its foundation have teamed with Three Square on food distribution before, including a holiday drive-thru event at Desert Breeze Community Center where members of the Golden Knights organization and their significant others packed cars with food alongside the food bank, according to a separate 8newsnow.com report.
Three Square itself has reported distributing 58 million pounds of food in fiscal year 2026, including 32 million donated pounds and 23 million pounds of rescued farm produce, per FOX5 Vegas. Against that scale, Saturday's 16,400-pound haul from Southwest Gas and Golden Knights volunteers represents one more installment in a food bank network trying to keep pace with rising need across the valley.
