We're Visiting Partners in Florida Today
Posted by Katherine Van Steenburgh on Thursday, December 9, 2010
This summer, my colleague Alice and I were lucky enough to visit Share Our Strength’s community partners in Palm Beach County and get an inside look at the progress made by The Florida Partnership to End Childhood Hunger.
We wrote a series of posts about our summer trip to Florida because we were extremely moved by our partners in Pahokee, Belle Glade, and West Palm Beach.
Today, we’re back in Palm Beach County and we’re joined by 38 community leaders and Share Our Strength supporters. We will lead the group on a tour of the area’s best community organizations to witness the impact the Florida Partnership has had on ending child hunger in this region. This event is part of Share Our Strength’s Hinges of Hope tours, which are experiential learning trips coordinated to give our supporters and volunteer leaders an opportunity to witness Share Our Strength’s work on the ground.
Most of the day will be spent in Belle Glade and Pahokee, Florida. In Belle Glade, 34% of residents live below the poverty level and last summer a study reported some sobering facts:
- The unemployment rate this area had increased to 32%
- 40% of residents receive food stamps
- 85% of students get free or reduced-price school lunches
Belle Glade is nicknamed Muck City, because of the large quantity of muck in the area, in which sugarcane grows, and roughly half of the sugarcane in the nation is grown in the plains around Belle Glade. It’s an area with a lot of need, and we’re proud to showcase the work that our partners on the ground are doing, with support from Share Our Strength.
Today we will be eating breakfast at Pahokee Elementary School; meeting with Faith Green, a local hero who grew up as a migrant worker and is now running a child development center serving the children of migrant workers; having lunch with the local hunger experts of Belle Glade, including our friends at Victory Tabernacle; and visiting the Rise and Shine Food Co-op program at one of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County, which is led by Palm Beach teens and funded by Share Our Strength.
You can follow our journey through Palm Beach County over on Twitter. And following the trip we’ll be sharing stories and images from the day.
December 9, 2010 | 1 comment(s) | Tags: florida, hinges of hope, no kid hungry
Comments
1 reader comment so far.
I give on a regular basis to children in Haiti and would love to commit to helping our children here in America. Do you have any type of ongoing contributioin program.
Posted by suzanne peters on November 30, 2011
Post a comment
All fields are required (your e-mail address will not be displayed)