Wow! Can you believe that the school year is almost over and summer is upon us?! We are so thankful for you and all of the Food For Thought Volunteers that have helped us achieve so much this past school year for the kids in our community.  Without your help over the 2018/19 school year, we would not have been able to accomplish all of this!

We have continued gratitude for the help that each one of you have provided this school year! The hours (over 10k!) that you have spent at Food For Thought, makes you, our volunteers the backbone of our operation.  The kids in our community would not be receiving the support through each of our programs without your help.  

Looking ahead, we are gearing up for summer program service, as well as planning for the 2019/20 school year and are appreciative for all of those that will continue to help and serve Food For Thought!

We are excited to see where this next year will take us and how we can better serve our community!

On Thursday, May 9th, Keller Williams volunteered at the Santa Rosa Beach pantry as part of "Red Day," the real estate agency's day of service.  Red Day stands for, "Renew, Energize, Donate, and Keller Williams celebrate's this day of service every year on the second Thursday in May.  

This year, the local Keller Williams Agency was able to help Food For Thought pack snack bags, which are used for teachers to distribute to students if they come to school hungry. In addition, Keller Williams donated 1,600 food items and they helped our team to sort and stock these donations in the pantry.  

We appreciate our local Keller Williams agency taking time from their day and using their Red Day to volunteer at Food For Thought!

We are so thankful for our volunteers at here at Food For Thought, and love when people volunteer their passions and talents.  In addition to volunteer opportunities for the backpack program, we also use volunteers in the Full Circle Kitchen and Full Circle Garden.  Today, we would like to thank Richard McCord and Ryan McNay from Marrow Private Chefs for the time the have spent helping in the Full Circle Kitchen and share a little more about them:

Richard & Ryan run Marrow Private Chefs, a boutique catering company that specializes in preparing restaurant quality, fine dining meals in your home.  These two became involved with FFT in the fall of 2018 while helping with Hurricane Michael relief, providing food to those affected by the hurricane.  After learning more about the FFT program, they both knew they wanted to continue to help in the Full Circle Kitchen to share their love of food and cooking.

The Marrow guys have lead a quite a few cooking classes for students and they "love getting to interact with the kids! We have truly enjoyed the opportunity to share our passion for food and cooking with the next generation. Whether they have a desire to work in the culinary field or simply want to be a better home cook, it is great to work with kids that want to learn!"

During one of the classes, they ventured to make homemade taffy, which the students absolutely loved, as well as Ryan and Richard.  They said, "Who doesn’t like homemade starburst?! Aside from that it is incredibly rewarding to work with folks who are so dedicated to helping others!"

We truly are grateful for the Richard and Ryan who take the time out of their busy catering business to help teach and make an impact on the students who take part in the Full Circle Kitchen.

You can learn more about how to become a volunteer HERE

Last week we at Food For Thought were honored to have Paula Deen stop by the Santa Rosa Beach Pantry! Paula and her foundation, The Bag Lady, graciously donated a $2,500 grant for Food for Thought.  

We are excited that Paula Deen has opened up two new restaurants in our area, "Paula Deen's Family Kitchen," in Panama City as well as a location at the Destin Commons.  Her new restaurant will also be partnering with Food For Thought to donate un-used or leftover food to be used in the Full Circle Kitchen cooking classes.  This un-used food will be air-sealed so that it can be kept as fresh as possible for the cooking classes. 

During her visit last week, Paula was able to see and help kids from the Walton Academy cook some of her very own recipes in the Full Circle Kitchen (pork chops and brussel sprouts), and she even leant a hand to the volunteer packing groups that were busy in the pantry prepping backpacks for the weekend.

Before leaving, Paula was even so kind to share in a blessing of the meal the students from Walton Academy had prepared.

We are so thankful for Paula Deen's generosity and look forward to working more together in the future to assist the children in our community.  

You can find out more information on Paula's visit to her new restaurant on the local news site, WEARTV.

Thank you, Bay Baits for sponsoring our Christmas 2018 program! With Bay Baits generous support, Food for Thought Outreach was able to provide service to 600 families in need in our area.  Did you know, that over the Christmas school break food insecure kids miss an average of 20 meals? We are thankful for Bay Baits enabling us to help bridge this hunger gap over the holidays! 

In addition to bridging the food gap over the holidays, there is also a need to bridge this food gap and keep kids nourished over the summer break. During summer break, the average student in our program can miss 110 meals.  The Food For Thought summer service program will provide food for 600 families, providing them each with a month worth of food, three times (food for three months in total).  By becoming a Summer program sponsor, you will empower children to be well-fed to enjoy their summer break!

Found out more information HERE on our Corporate Sponsorship for the summer program, or contact us today: support@fftfl.org