Through Walmart’s Fighting Hunger Together fall initiative, Walmart store #5990 in Wichita won a “Golden Spark” and chose the Wichita community to receive a $50,000 grant from Walmart to help expand a local backpack program. Today, Walmart awards that $50,000 in grants to Kansas Food Bank of Wichita.
“We are proud of our local community for participating in Walmart’s Golden Spark promotion. Their thoughtfulness has allowed us the opportunity to receive this grant today,” said Debi Kreutzman, community relations manager at Kansas Food Bank. “Through this funding, we will be able to provide backpacks filled with food to children in our community when school meals are not available.”
The Kansas Food Bank backpack program is designed to meet the needs of Sedgwick County children by providing them with easy to prepare foods to take home during the weekends or holiday vacation when other resources they rely on, such as free or reduced-price school meals, are not available. According to Feeding America, the current child food insecurity rate in Sedgwick County Kansas is 23.1 percent—that’s 30,020 children. With the $50,000 in grants from Walmart, Kansas Food Bank will be able to provide 1,200 children in Sedgwick County with more than 55,000 vital meals for the next three years. The backpack program will be implemented in collaboration with all the schools in the Wichita school district as well as Oaklawn Elementary and Cooper Elementary located in the Derby school district.
“We are excited by the energy and engagement of our associates and customers in fighting hunger together. The backpack programs started or expanded across the U.S. as a result of this initiative will help to provide an estimated two million weekend meals to children nationwide,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation. “During the past several weeks, we saw an exceptional level of engagement, especially in rural communities where the population may be small, but community spirit is certainly high. By providing unique and creative opportunities for our customers and associates to join the fight against hunger, we hope to make a lasting impact in the local communities that need it most.”
The Fighting Hunger Together fall initiative is part of Walmart and the Walmart Foundation’s $2 billion commitment through 2015 to fight hunger. As a part of this commitment, Walmart and its Foundation pledged to donate more than 1.1 billion pounds of food from Walmart stores, distribution centers and Sam’s Club locations, valued at $1.75 billion, as well as $250 million in grants to support hunger relief organizations. To learn more about our commitment, visit www.walmartfoundation.org.
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