On May 2nd, there will be an official grand opening of the Valley View Food Bank at the Valley View Food Bank at 10:00AM. There will be hotdogs, chips, drinks and live music. Everybody is more than welcome to come so bring your friends and family!
Liz Taylor ♥
On Saturday, March 28, from 3:00-7:00PM, there will be a open house where you can sample Kokopelli Winery’s finest wines, see several of the latest 2009 Lexus models, and enjoy a stroll through DiamondSpur Builders’s new 5500 square foot luxury home nestled in the northwest valley’s finest private golf community-Blackstone Country Club. The open house will be located at 30892 N. 118th Lane, at Blackstone Country Club at Vistancia and will be hosted by DiamondSpur Builders LLC and Arrowhead Lexus. Proceeds will be donated to The 3000 Club to advance their mission of providing fresh food to our communities’ food banks. The donation will be $10. For more information, visit www.diamondspurbuilders.com.
Liz Taylor ♥
One of the joys of being the Co-Founder of The 3000 Club is witnessing how our involvement is creating an impact in our lives!
When I first met Jodie Wilson, owner of www.DiscoverTheRegion.com, in one of the networking groups in Surprise last year, she immediately grasped the severity of problem we have trying to rescue the millions of pounds of produce that are thrown away in Nogales. Not only did she join the volunteer group that went to Nogales before Thanksgiving Day last year, but she decided to do much more than that. Since January, Jodie was able to coordinate three produce distributions, with the latest one on January 28, 2009. Jodie had gladly accepted her new title of The 3000 Club Produce Ambassador.
Liz Taylor ♥
During the past few weeks, our Executive Director from Borderland Food Bank Yolanda Soto, worked feverishly to find homes for rescued Roma and regular tomatoes, orange bell peppers and European cucumbers. In one of her daily offerings, there were mixtures of these produce weighing over 200,000 pounds!
According to Yolanda Soto, Executive Director of Borderland Food Bank, in January and February, Borderland was saturated with rescued tomatoes. It became extremely difficult to find these tomatoes homes and they had to end up dumping at least 50 percent of them.
In Arizona, the only food banks that accepted tomatoes were St. Mary’s Alliance, Wilcox, Northern Arizona Food Bank and our newest agency, Valley View Food Bank in Surprise. There were different types of tomatoes: beef, vine ripe, house, cherry, grape, Roma and regular. Borderland did a lot of repacking for three weeks in January, until it started receiving 90% good product. The saturation of tomatoes was due to a reduction in the market price of tomatoes. Thanks to Yolanda Soto for all her hard work.
Liz Taylor ♥
Bins of Clothes
In mid November, we received our first trailer load of clothes and right away we put our inmate program to work. They separated them into various categories such as women, mens, boys, girls, babies and shoes. After all the clothes were organized, they were placed in brand new duffle bags which had been donated to us thru the Northern Arizona Food Bank. In the end, we filled up 600 requests which was approximately 2,400 children, 600 ladies and 420 men.
On Friday, February 27, 2009, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., we will be having our second event. We have 40 bins of clothes that we have not done anything with except unload it from the trailer and place them in bins. We’re thinking of just having the people go thru the bins and take what they need. We will be supplying them with a grocery basket which they will fill up. We will also be distributing produce on that day and boxes of sparkling green tea which Kerry Ketchum got donated for us.
Special thanks to The 3000 Club for making this possible.
Liz Taylor ♥