What a great way to kick off our Summer Program food drive! Thank you to Pizza by the Sea, Winn-Dixie and Grand Boulevard for hosting our vans to collect food items for our summer program. There was a great turn out at each location over the last two weeks, and we are grateful to you and your customers for helping to fill our pantry for the summer.

Look below at the number of food items that were collected through each location; these donations have helped to provide for our first summer service earlier this week: 

• Pizza-by-the-Sea: 1,227 food items
• Winn-Dixie Destin: 801 food items and $1K in monetary donations
• Grand Boulevard Farmer's Market: 355 food items and $135 in monetary donations

We still are collecting donations for the 2nd and 3rd summer meal service.  You can drop off donations at any of the pantry locations on Tuesdays, from 8:30-4:30, or donate online HERE. 

A portion of the donations from Cram the Van:

Pizza-by-the-Sea: 

Wow, what a great event the Love All Tennis Tournament in Rosemary Beach event turned out to be! 

A huge thank you to Hilary & Reverie Properties for organizing and sponsoring this event, as well as a thank you to the many other sponsors who donated food, time and items for the silent Auction.  This sold-out event raised more than $14K for Food Thought, and we are so grateful!!

We hope that our 48 players enjoyed their day playing in the sun; it definitely was a warmer day than expected but all the players looked to be having a great time.

In addition to a full day of tennis, the auction lot did not disappoint.  Thank you to the local businesses who donated for the silent auction:

• Lizard Thicket Boutique
• Sunset Helicopter Flight
• Dinner for 4 by Roux 30a
• Spa treatment from Destin Plastic Surgery
• IV treatments from Aesthetic Clinic
• Escapology Escape Rooms Destin game package,
• Dinner for 6 by Macho Taco
• (and many more items were available as well!)

Keep an eye out for the 2020 Love All Tennis Save the Date; this event will most definitely be back in 2020!

We had such a fun day hosting our first annual crawfish boil on Sunday, May 5th! It was a beautiful (and hot!) day, and we loved visiting with the guests that stopped by to eat crawfish and listen to music performed by Scott Rockwood. Through your generosity, we raised $2,150 for our summer meal program! This was definitely a great way to kick off our summer program and we look forward to hosting another event at FFT hopefully in the near future.  Thank you to all who came out and for your support!

Our program coordinator, Bennet Bastian, has had quite the array of experiences prior to joining the team at Food For Thought. A world traveler and volunteer with The Peace Corp, Bennet is fluent in four additional languages (German + 3 Ethiopian languages).  His two years experience with the Peace Corp and as a public health contractor in Ethiopia lead him to Food For Thought when he returned to his home on the Emerald Coast. 

During his time in Ethiopia, Bennet focused on public health, organizing volunteers and gardening, which has translated well to his role at Food For Thought as the program coordinator.  He spends his time supporting the programs at each of the pantries (backpack, snack and garden), and definitely has become our go-to-guy for anything related to the Full Circle Garden, as he helps to keep them flourishing. In addition, Bennet is key in helping our program director facilitate the packing and delivery of the backpacks and snacks to each of the schools among the two counties FFT Serves.

Bennet enjoys the interaction he has with the volunteers that come to help Food For Thought, and was drawn to FFT outreach knowing that it is helping to benefit kids in our community that are in need.  A native of Okaloosa County, Bennet said that if he were a kid today, he would likely have been a beneficiary of the FFT program as he was on the reduced meal program in school himself.  

We appreciate all the hard work that Bennet does coordinating our backpack, snack and garden programs and are very thankful that he has a green thumb!