/PRNewswire/ -- Leveraging a $20,000 "Feeding Our Future®" grant from the Sodexo Foundation, the Sodexo account at UPS Headquarters and The Coca-Cola Company celebrated serving 13,000 free lunches to Atlanta's children. Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young acknowledged volunteers for their efforts during a special barbeque held for city youth yesterday at the Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA. Sodexo's Feeding Our Future program provides school children who rely on free and reduced-price meals during the academic year with nutritious lunches during the summer break.
"With nearly one in four children living in households that find it increasingly difficult to put food on the table, there are bound to be additional challenges when the school doors close for the summer," said Stephen J. Brady, president of the Sodexo Foundation. "As the leading food service provider to public schools throughout this country, we understand the needs that exist and we are determined to make a positive impact that leads to the elimination of hunger in this country."
Every day, an estimated 17 million U.S. children rely on school breakfast and lunch programs as their only guaranteed meals. When schools shut down for the summer, federal meal programs feed only about three million, leaving 13 million children at risk for hunger. To help bridge this gap, the Sodexo Foundation, the independent charitable organization of Sodexo, Inc., has provided free lunches to children through its summer feeding program, Feeding Our Future, since 1997. The Sodexo Foundation provides grants to local Sodexo accounts to purchase food for the meals and local Sodexo employees prepare the meals each day.
In addition to Atlanta, Feeding Our Future will be providing more than 300,000 summer lunches in 19 other cities in the United States: Boston, Mass., Buffalo, N.Y., Camden, N.J., Chattanooga, Tenn., Chicago, Ill., Denver, Colo., Detroit, Mich., Fort Worth, Texas, Honolulu, Hawaii, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, Calif., Miami, Fla., New York, N.Y., Oklahoma City, Okla., San Jose, Calif., St. Cloud, Minn., St. Louis, Mo., Terre Haute, Ind. and Washington, D.C.
Feeding Our Future is a program of the Sodexo Foundation, an independent charitable organization supporting hunger-related initiatives that focus on eliminating the root causes of hunger in the U.S. Sodexo pays all administrative costs of the Foundation to ensure that all money raised is directed to those in need.
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