Forgotten Harvest, the metro Detroit organization that collects and distributes perishable and leftover food, received a $1-million donation Thursday from Art Van Furniture.
The corporate donation, the largest in the nonprofit’s history, was heralded at a breakfast at the Detroit Athletic Club as part of the ongoing “Hunger Has An Address” fund-raising campaign to raise $11 million. So far, $5.5 million has been raised.
“This is an incredibly generous campaign,” new Forgotten Harvest Chairman Dave Nicholson, vice president of PVS Chemicals in Detroit, told a group of about 60 Forgotten Harvest supporters, many from the metro Detroit business community.
“It costs us 20 cents to do a meal — so what is that, 5 million meals? That’s what it means to the organization. It’s incredible.”
Jaime Rae Turnbull, spokeswoman for Art Van’s charitable giving, said Forgotten Harvest provides food to 25 of the 150 charities the furniture retailer supports, including Grace Centers of Hope in Pontiac and Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit.
The organization rescued 43.9 million pounds of food in 2011, providing it to needy people in metro Detroit.
One in five children in metro Detroit faces hunger. Much of the need is among metro Detroit’s working poor people, estimated to be about 21% of the region’s population.
“Those are the people that are working two and three jobs to provide for their family,” Forgotten Harvest Chief Development Officer Russ Russell said. “Those are the people you’re helping.”
Forgotten Harvest founder Nancy Fishman, 63, who picks food out of fields and volunteers at the warehouse once a week, called the donation incredible.
“It’s grown to a proportion that is so surreal to me that I find it personally necessary to be in the fields and in the warehouse, to have my hands on the food, to remind me why we do what we do,” Fishman said.
She started picking up and distributing food from the back of her Jeep Cherokee in 1988. She created Forgotten Harvest in 1990.
Frank Kubik, food program director for Focus: HOPE, an organization that distributes food, said he continues to see incredible need.
“More and more people are coming in every day. … Numbers are one thing, but behind every number there’s a face. And on their dinner plate tonight will be food that Forgotten Harvest provided for them,” Kubik told the group.
Similar news:
RSS
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
