Aug 30, 2020

Grant and Partner Updates

City Of Woodinville Human Services Grant Update

This year has brought both challenges and opportunities and we are so thankful for additional support from donors and grantors! Thanks to the emergency human services grant from the City of Woodinville that we told you about in June, we were able to add new farm and agency partners to get more healthy produce out to Woodinville area residents in need of healthy food.

NEW Community Agency Partner: Due to unforeseen circumstances, our partners for this grant funding have changed. We are excited to announce and introduce you to our new partner; Sound Generations. Sound Generations employs a chef to work at the kitchen of the Northshore Senior Center. FFL produce is delivered to this chef, who prepares meals for the Senior Center programs (approximately 300 meals per week are being prepared using this produce).

NEW Farm Partners: For this grant we are partnering with three Woodinville farms; Gaining Ground, Songbird Haven, and Regeneration Farm. Due to high produce demand, we also added a fourth farm for this project, Alki Market Garden. All four of these farms are a part of Viva Farms King County. FFL is thrilled that the majority of our COW project involves Woodinville farms delivering Woodinville-grown produce to a program feeding Woodinville residents.

This has provided fresh, local produce used in approximately 1,200 meals at the Senior Center so far (or alternatively, 491.9 lbs of produce)!

In addition to the City of Woodinville grant:

After the first week of produce deliveries, the Northshore Senior Center reached out to FFL to let us know that they also run a pop-up food pantry program. The FFL board decided to launch its own fund (fully funded by the board of directors) to purchase local, farm fresh produce for the Senior Center food pantry. For the food pantry, we use the same four Viva farms listed above.

Below are some facts about our board-funded project with the pantry:

The pantry uses produce from our Monday deliveries for its Tuesday pantry hours. The pantry is open for 3 hours total that day. The first two hours are open exclusively to seniors and folks with disabilities. The final third hour is open to the community at large
The pantry sees about 100 people during its Tuesdays hours, but they estimate the total impact is actually around 600 people

Peggy, the pantry coordinator is elated to be receiving the farm fresh produce, telling us "the produce that was delivered was amazing, and the customers were absolutely thrilled to be receiving it!"