BlueCross, SodexoMAGIC holds an end-of-summer barbeque for Chattanooga youth

Volunteers from SodexoMAGIC, LLC and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee will hold an end-of-summer barbeque for Chattanooga youth today, celebrating the service of nearly 21,000 free summer lunches this year funded by a Feeding Our Future® grant from the Sodexo Foundation. Now in its 5th year in Chattanooga and 15th year nationally, Sodexo's Feeding Our Future program provides school children who rely on free and reduced-price meals during the academic year with nutritious lunches during the summer break. The barbeque kicks off at 11:30 a.m. at the Highland Park Boys & Girls Club and will include free drawings for Magic Johnson memorabilia, including an autographed basketball.

"A slow-to-recover economy has only added to an already difficult situation for families that find it hard to put food on the table for their children," said Robert A. Stern, president, the Sodexo Foundation. "Feeding Our Future is just one of many programs the Sodexo Foundation supports – along with partners like BlueCross and The Chattanooga Area Food Bank – to help alleviate some of those pressures, and to ensure that all children have every opportunity for a bright future."

SodexoMAGIC and BlueCross are the lead organizers of the program in Chattanooga, taking responsibility for ordering, preparing, and helping to serve the meals throughout the program which began this year on May 31 and ends July 29. Also playing a vital role in the Chattanooga Feeding Our Future program were volunteers from Inner City Ministries, the Alton Park, East Lake and Highland Park Boys & Girls Clubs.

During the summer, more than 83 percent of children who are eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals go without nutritious lunches – that is approximately 15 million children. Even with the existence of federal meal programs, when schools close for the summer, millions of children risk going hungry for lack of dependable access to enough nutritious food. Since 1997, Sodexo has helped provide free lunches nationally to children in order to help bridge this gap, and to date Feeding Our Future has served nearly 74,000 summer meals to children in the city of Chattanooga alone.

"This program supports our outreach efforts to improve the well-being of our fellow Tennesseans and fills a great need for children in our community," said Ryan Picarella, BlueCross manager of corporate wellness.