Food Lion Supports No Kid Hungry Campaign
With the current unreliable nature of in-school meals, Food Lion is stepping up to ensure that no student goes hungry. Its hunger relief platform, Food Lion Feeds, has donated more than $106,000 in child feeding grants to the No Kid Hungry campaign.
No Kid Hungry helps to reduce the gap between the number of schoolchildren who are eligible to receive free school breakfast and those kids who actually receive the meal. It is a campaign of Washington D.C.-based Share Our Strength, an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, one in four kids could face hunger. With many schools still closed for in-person learning, food-insecure children have had one fewer resource available for nourishment.
Through Food Lion Feeds grants, local school districts receive additional funding to support school systems' efforts to create more sustainable infrastructures to distribute food in innovative ways.
“No child should ever face hunger, and through partnerships like this with No Kid Hungry, Food Lion is committed to ensuring that students can focus more on learning than where their next meal will come from,” said Jennifer Blanchard, director of community relations for Food Lion. “The last year has been difficult for many of our neighbors. We know they’re counting on us more than ever to help nourish their families, and we’re committed to doing everything we can to support our neighbors in the towns and cities we serve.”
Distributed to five school districts across South Carolina and Virginia, the grants will support feeding programs at nearly 200 schools across those districts in the towns and cities that Food Lion serves. The school districts are:
- Essex County Public Schools – three schools - Tappahannock, Virginia - $15,700
- Newport News Public Schools – 45 schools - Newport News, Virginia - $30,000
- Prince Edward County School District – three schools - Farmville, Virginia - $10,000
- Horry County Schools – 53 schools - Conway, South Carolina - $35,000
- Greenville County School District – 87 schools - Greenville, South Carolina - $16,150
“We are truly grateful for our partnership with Food Lion,” said Diana Hovey, SVP, corporate partnerships at Share Our Strength. “With support from partners like Food Lion, we can ensure children have access to healthy meals during this pandemic and in the recovery to come.”
Food Lion initially partnered with No Kid Hungry in 2019.
Through Food Lion Feeds, Food Lion has donated more than 750 million meals to individuals and families since 2014 through a combination of product, financial and equipment donations; disaster relief and recovery efforts; volunteer hours by associates; in-store retail campaigns; and the company’s food rescue program. After donating its 500 millionth meal in 2019, Food Lion committed to donate 1 billion more meals by 2025.
Additionally, San Francisco-based Instacart recently launched Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment integration in partnership with Food Lion. With this launch, EBT SNAP online payment will now be available at more than 350 Food Lion stores across North Carolina. People who rely on EBT SNAP can use their benefits for online grocery delivery and pickup at Food Lion. More than 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, accounting for $55 billion in food retail sales.
Salisbury, North Carolina-based Food Lion has more than 1,000 stores in 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and employs more than 68,000 associates. Its parent company, Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of Zaandam, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize operating more than 2,000 stores across 23 states, is No. 11 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2020 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
