NOTE: NEWS MEDIA EVENT - Friday July 11, 11:45 a.m.
For Immediate Release
Second Harvest, Panera team to feed
local kids through new delivery vehicle
Initiative fights local hunger, supports Kids Cafe summer meals program JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (July 10, 2008) - Almost half of Jacksonville children receive free or reduced lunches during the school year. But during the summer months, thousands of those kids go hungry each day.
Jacksonville's Second Harvest Food Bank, with help from Panera Bread, is addressing that problem with a new initiative designed to provide important meals to thousands of low-income children this summer. Second Harvest will use a special new food delivery truck, provided in part by Panera Bread, to deliver food and refrigerated products used to create hot, nutritionally-balanced meals for dozens of Kid Cafe sites around the city. One of the first such deliveries will be made at 11:45 a.m. Friday, July 11 at the Police Athletic League Kids Cafe Site, 2165 West 33rd Street.
"Panera Bread's passion for fighting hunger has helped make it possible for Second Harvest to ensure local low-income children are fed nutritious meals this summer," said Wayne Rieley, executive director of Second Harvest. "With a record number of families struggling to make ends meet, these sites will make a huge difference for so many local children this summer."
Panera Bread helped fund the new food delivery truck as a part of its Operation Dough-Nation, Community Breadbox program, which ensures that donations made at Panera Bread are matched by the company and then given back to the community.
Hunger and poverty affect a substantial portion of Jacksonville children.
· 49.3 percent of local children receive free or reduced lunch during the school year.
· 15.4 percent of all Jacksonville children live in poverty.
· Minorities are disproportionately affected with about one in four living in poverty.
· 38 percent of all Jacksonville children live in low-income homes (defined as homes where the income is below 200 percent of the federal poverty level).
The physical, mental, and emotional effects of child hunger are damaging and affect individual children as well as future knowledge, brainpower and productivity for the nation.
· Hunger has a negative impact on children's ability to learn in and out of school.
· Hunger contributes to stunting (low height for age) in children.
· Hungry children suffer from two to four times as many individual health problems, such as weight loss, fatigue and headaches. |
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| About Second Harvest Food Bank of North Florida
Second Harvest Food Bank of North Florida is the oldest and largest program of Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida. LSS was founded in 1979 by area Lutherans and business leaders and continues to be led by LCMS and ELCA congregations today. The agency currently operates five programs: Second Harvest Food Bank, a member of America's Second Harvest food network; Refugee and Immigration Services, which resettles 90% of all refugees coming to Jacksonville through Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM); International Adoption, a member of Lutheran Adoption Network, a national collaboration of 30 Lutheran social ministry organizations that place thousands of children in caring adoptive homes, regardless of faith background, every year; AIDS Care and Education Program and Representative Payee Services. LSS also operates The Sharing Place Thrift Shop, 4615 Philips Highway, Tues.-Sat. Call 904.448.5995 for more information about any of these programs and services. |
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| CONTACT:
Second Harvest Food Bank of North Florida Tom Strother
Communications Manager
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NEWS MEDIA EVENT:
Friday, July 11
11:45 a.m.
WHAT: The Second Harvest Kids Cafe summer meals program will make a delivery to the Police Athletic League site on West 33rd Street using the new Second Harvest Kids Cafe truck, provided in part by Panera Bread.
WHERE: The Police Athletic League site is at 2165 West 33rd Street.
WHEN: The truck will deliver the needed supplies and food products to the site at 11:45 a.m. on Friday, July 11, with the children at the site scheduled to eat their lunch provided through the program at noon.
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