Leveraging a $20,000 "Feeding Our Future®" grant from the Sodexo Foundation, St. Anthony Central Hospital, along with volunteers from Sodexo and the Food Bank of the Rockies, serves 12,400 summer lunches to Denver children at risk of hunger. Sodexo's Feeding Our Future program provides school children who rely on free and reduced-price meals during the academic year with nutritious lunches during the summer break. The Food Bank of the Rockies and volunteers from Sodexo today celebrate the successful summer program with a special barbeque for more than 300 area children. City Council member Paula Sandoval and officials from the offices of Senator Mark Udall and Senator Michael Bennet will be in attendance along with former Denver Nuggets players, Walter Davis and Ervin Johnson.
Sodexo managers and staff volunteered to cook for the barbeque, while volunteers from St. Anthony Central Hospital coordinate logistics. Each child attending event the will receive a bicycle helmet and a food-filled backpack, donated by various local organizations.
"With nearly one in four children living in households that find it increasingly difficult to put food on the table, there are bound to be additional challenges when the school doors close for the summer," said Stephen J. Brady, president of the Sodexo Foundation. "As the leading food service provider to public schools throughout this country, we understand the needs that exist and we are determined to make a positive impact that leads to the elimination of hunger in this country."
Every day, an estimated 17 million U.S. children rely on school breakfast and lunch programs as their only guaranteed meals. When schools shut down for the summer, federal meal programs feed only about three million, leaving 13 million children at risk for hunger. To help bridge this gap, the Sodexo Foundation, the independent charitable organization of Sodexo, Inc., has provided free lunches to children through its summer feeding program, Feeding Our Future, since 1997. The Sodexo Foundation provides grants to local Sodexo accounts to purchase food for the meals and local Sodexo employees prepare the meals each day.
In addition to Denver, Feeding Our Future will be providing more than 300,000 summer lunches in 19 other cities in the United States: Atlanta, Ga., Boston, Mass., Buffalo, N.Y., Camden, N.J., Chattanooga, Tenn., Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Fort Worth, Texas, Honolulu, Hawaii, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, Calif., Miami, Fla., New York, N.Y., Oklahoma City, Okla., San Jose, Calif., St. Cloud, Minn., St. Louis, Mo., Terre Haute, Ind. and Washington, D.C.
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