AmOnline.com |

America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest hunger relief organization, is pleased to announce that the Sara Lee Foundation has provided a grant towards the ongoing effort to combat hunger in America. The contribution will be applied to supporting and expanding America’s Second Harvest’s existing Store Donation Program throughout the nation’s network of food banks. The Store Donation Program facilitates the process for supermarket retailers to donate perishable food from their inventory to local food banks, thus greatly helping people in communities across the nation.

The grant will be used to educate America’s Second Harvest’s 205 food banks on how to successfully execute this program with supermarket retailers in their community. America’s Second Harvest will also collect data from member food banks currently participating in the store donation program and analyze the data to develop a new online User Guide and toolkit that will be available to all member food banks nationwide. "Best Practices" will be shared with the network.

The Store Donation Program has massive potential to expand the quantity of fresh food available to Americans at risk of hunger, allowing food banks to rescue highly nutritious perishable food, such as dairy products, deli items and meat.

Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of America’s Second Harvest said in a prepared statement, "The Sara Lee Foundation’s donation will enable our network to significantly improve our ability to rescue millions of pounds of food from retail stores throughout the nation. We would not be able to expand this important program without this generous funding from the Sara Lee Foundation."

"Sara Lee’s donation will increase the amount of fruits, vegetables and protein that will be available in community food pantries across the nation, thus providing many families with access to highly nutritious food," says Judy E. Schaefer, director, Sara Lee Foundation. "Support for this program will ensure that best practices are centralized and shared across the nation, fostering valuable partnerships between food banks and supermarket retailers. This is a highly effective and efficient program that has enormous potential to impact the quantity and quality of food available in many underserved communities."

The Sara Lee Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Sara Lee Corp. and is operated as a separate entity with its own board of directors. Through the Foundation, Sara Lee is committed to strengthening and improving communities where Sara Lee has a presence by providing focused program support addressing food-related issues such as food insecurity and nutrition; healthy lifestyles; women’s self-sufficiency and diversity through the support of cultural initiatives. To learn more, please visit www.saraleefoundation.org.