This Summer, 100,000 Free Lunches to be Delivered to Kids in Need Across Canada

TORONTO, July 3 – Starting today, the Sodexho Foundation will be providing free lunches for thousands of high-need children in seven Canadian cities. Many of these children, who rely on free or subsidized lunches during the school year, were going hungry throughout the summer months. But through a partnership between The Sodexho Foundation and local food relief programs, these children are assured that they will receive a nutritious lunch through the Feeding Our Future program. In Toronto, Sodexho has partnered with Second Harvest. For the next two months, each morning at the crack of dawn, Sodexho employees will voluntarily gather at York University to make healthy lunches, which are then picked up by Second Harvest and delivered to 10 day camps in the Greater Toronto Area.

This year marks an important change in the Toronto program. In addition to delivering the lunches to downtown camps, two new summer programs (one in Jane/Finch; the other in North Etobicoke) have been added to the delivery route.

Second Harvest’s Executive Director Zoe Cormack Jones says the addition of these recipient agencies is key to the growth of the program. “Traditionally, these are under-serviced areas, and with our deliveries to both Braeburn and San Romanoway, Second Harvest and the Sodexho Foundation are ensuring that these kids will have at least one healthy meal a day.” Additional funding for the Toronto program has been provided by the Geoffrey H. Wood Foundation.

Feeding Our Future is now operating in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax, and on July 19th, all of these cities will celebrate this innovative program by holding their own barbeque. In Toronto, the barbeque will be held at 12:00 to 2:00 at York University.

Every day, Second Harvest picks up donated, high quality fresh food, which would otherwise have gone to waste, and delivers that food to 240 social service programs in Metro Toronto. Second Harvest currently provides food for about 13,000 meals a day to children in breakfast programs, seniors on fixed incomes, women fleeing domestic abuse, psychiatric patients, homeless people, and many others who have fallen on hard times.

Sodexho is the leading provider of food and facilities management in North America. Sodexho offers innovative outsourcing solutions in food service, housekeeping, grounds keeping, plant operations and maintenance, asset and materials management, and laundry services to corporations, health care and long term care facilities, retirement centers, schools, college and university campuses, military and remote sites. With Canadian Headquarters in Burlington, Ontario the company has 130,000 employees at more than 6,000 locations across North America. Sodexho Canada has been awarded the Gold level certification for the Progressive Aboriginal Relations program (PAR) with the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB). Sodexho Canada has created the charitable organization, the Sodexho Foundation, which is dedicated to the fight against hunger as it impacts over 5 million people in Canada.

For further information: Abby Robins, Communications Manager, Second Harvest, Office: (416) 408-2594; Cell: (416) 315-5280 or abbyr@secondharvest.ca, www.secondharvest.ca; Jon Kristjanson, Vice President, Sodexho, (905) 632-8592 ext.250 or jon.kristjanson@sodexhoCA.com, www.sodexho.ca