Afton DeVos, Associate Director, Bridget Clark Whitney, Executive Director, and Brandy Arnold, Youth and Inclusion Specialist /Elizabeth Rogers Drouillard
To find a list of upcoming Kids' Food Basket events or to get involved, visit this link. To donate, visit this link.
Students from Coit Creative Arts Academy and Kids Food Basket participants with Executive Director, Bridget Clark Whitney /Elizabeth Rogers Drouillard
Students from Coit Creative Arts Academy /Elizabeth Rogers Drouillard
Kids’ Food Basket announced their new $6 million campaign, "Feeding Our Future" at the future site of their new headquarters on an old Grand Rapids' farm at a ceremony this morning at 1919 Leonard St. NE.
Bridget Clark Whitney, Executive Director of the non-profit kicked off the event with opening remarks. “We feel there’s no better use for the largest working farmland in Grand Rapids than to connect the kids we serve directly to the healthy food they’re eating each weekday and to equip them with hands-on experience, knowledge and skills needed to make healthy, lifelong food choices. This important opportunity is critical to the expansion of our sack supper program in order to reduce our school waiting lists, accommodate more volunteers and ensure long-term sustainability and increase healthy food access and education for our entire community.”
Jay Ertl, Co-Chair of the “Feeding Our Future” campaign, regular volunteer and past board chair followed with comments about the anticipated impact of Kids’ Food Basket’s growth. Currently, the non-profit feeds 7,500 kids each day. As many kids as that is, it is still only 21 percent of the need in Kent County. The expansion will allow them to more than double that, feeding up to 15,000 children. He also mentioned that the new building would be LEED certified, following the non-profit’s value of sustainability and good stewardship of their resources.
DTE Energy Foundation announced their campaign match of the first $100,000 of the campaign.
Clark Whitney closed the event by encouraging supporters to share the campaign on all their social media channels. “While there’s nothing fun about childhood hunger, changing the world can be fun. We invite you to join us in making this campaign an everlasting success for our community. We ask you to join us because hunger hurts. Join us because every child in our community has the right to good, healthy, nourishing food. Join us because we can’t have a strong West Michigan without strong kids."
Visit Kids’ Food Basket to find out more about the “Feeding Our Future” campaign and its upcoming events and ways to get involved.
The Rapidian, a program of the 501(c)3 nonprofit Community Media Center, relies on the community’s support to help cover the cost of training reporters and publishing content.
We need your help.
If each of our readers and content creators who values this community platform help support its creation and maintenance, The Rapidian can continue to educate and facilitate a conversation around issues for years to come.
Please support The Rapidian and make a contribution today.