December 29, 2009

250,000 Pound of Food Into the Community

Author: Brady Koch

Thanks to the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation we’ll be able to put 250,000 more pounds of food into the community during the remainder of the holiday season and beyond. The foundation has donated funding to Jewish Family Services, Catholic Charities and ourselves to make this quarter-of-a-million pounds happen.

Take a moment to read Kate Santich from the Orlando Sentinel’s blog entry “What can you do with 250,000 pounds of food? A lot” about the donation. She’s a better wordsmith than I.

 Just to show you how much food this is here’s some different ways to measure the impact of the donation.

• This is enough for 166,000 meals.
• This is more than 6 tractor-trailers full of food.
• This is more than 175 palates of food.
• This could feed a family of four, three meals a day for over 40 years.

 OK that last one was a little silly, but I wanted to explain how much food this is and how much of an impact this makes in the community. I don’t know what the shelf life is for a can of peas, but they may not be good in 2049.

If you’re interested in joining the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation and us in the fight against hunger, please contact Second Harvest and we’ll be happy to talk.

Brady Koch
Director of Agency Relations & Programs

December 21, 2009

Working Together to Save Winter Break

Author: Brady Koch

This past Saturday we partnered with Orange County Public Schools and the Winter Park Health Foundation to provide food to families this holiday season. The two week break from school can be especially difficult to children who rely on the free and reduced school lunch program. With this in mind, we gathered a team of volunteers, 22,000 lbs of food and marketed the weekend food distribution to children participating in our Hi-Five program at eight of the schools located near our two distribution sites.

 When I arrived at Cheney Elementary on Saturday, there were already some families there over an hour and a half earlier than our scheduled starting time. We had 10 palettes of potatoes, oranges, bread , pastries, and pantry boxes filled with 14 common items like peanut butter and tuna. As the morning went on, we ended up distributing food to 450 families at Cheney and Hungerford Elementary.

A couple of the stories stood out to me that demonstrated how our community comes together in times of need. Two mothers whose families received food that morning returned to our site to volunteer the rest of the day. Another mother, who had no transportation, walked for two hours to get to our site. She was willing to physically carry all of the food back home. Thankfully, another volunteer loaded up her groceries and drove her home.

A father and son rode to our site on bicycles and a pair of volunteers tried their best to safely load the bicycles with any food that they could carry. When another recipient family saw this they offered to take the father and son, bicycles, and food back home.

While we know it isn’t enough food for two entire weeks in meals it was enough to make an immediate difference in these families’ lives. It was a great way to come together as a community and fight hunger in Central Florida.

Brady Koch
Director of Agency Relations & Programs