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The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

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Thursday, February 10, 2011

News Young Couple Donates $250,000 to Tucson Community Food Bank

Posted by Adam Borowitz on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 5:44 PM

This just in:

A young couple has anonymously given the Community Food Bank a gift of $250,000 on behalf of their family. According to the food bank’s chief development officer, Pauline Hechler, “This is the largest one-time cash gift ever made to the food bank, and we are so grateful.”

Hechler says the couple chose the food bank for several reasons: 1) their family loves good, locally grown food and believes everyone, especially children, should have access to it, 2) they were impressed with the willingness of Nick Henry, who manages the Farm-to-Child program, to discuss their ideas, and 3) they liked the idea of putting some of the money into an endowment for the Farm-to-Child program. “The care, passion and genuine qualities the food bank revealed to us” were the determining factors for their selecting the food bank for the gift, they said.

The Farm-to-Child program is being established as part of the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) initiative to prevent or reduce obesity through increased opportunities for improved nutrition and physical activity. Administered by the Pima County Health Department, CPPW is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The program will begin working with childcare providers, forming them into groups to share resources, pool their buying power, and work with local growers to get healthy food at a reasonable price. “This is an excellent opportunity to expose our future leaders to healthy foods and create a model program that can be implemented across the country,” says Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie.