Sodexo and Coca-Cola Celebrate Feeding Our Future® for Serving More Than 125,000 Free Summer Lunches to Atlanta Children

ATLANTA, July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Leveraging a Feeding Our Future® grant from the Sodexo Foundation and matching funds from The Coca-Cola Company, Sodexo employees at UPS Headquarters and volunteers from The Coca-Cola Company today celebrate Feeding Our Future for serving more than 125,000 free summer lunches to Atlanta's children, including 11,000 meals this summer. Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young will be on hand for a special barbeque to be held for the city's youth at the Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA. Now in its 15th year nationally, and 10th year in Atlanta, 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.

"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 of the Sodexo Foundation. "Feeding Our Future is just one of many programs the Sodexo Foundation supports -- along with partners like The Coca-Cola Company -- to help alleviate some of those pressures, and to ensure that all children have every opportunity for a bright future."

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 more than 125,000 summer meals to children in the city of Atlanta alone.

"This event at the Young Family YMCA is one of the highlights of our ongoing relationship with Sodexo's Feeding Our Future program," said Ed Baines, VP of National Accounts for Sodexo at Coca-Cola Refreshments. "Throughout the summer, our associates work with volunteers from Sodexo and the Atlanta Community Food Bank to serve our city's most vulnerable citizens. As we celebrate our 125th anniversary this year, Coca-Cola reaffirms its commitment to helping individuals in our community who are in need."  

This summer Feeding Our Future will provide 400,000 summer lunches in 24 cities, including: Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, N.Y., Camden, N.J., Chattanooga, Tenn., Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Fort Worth, Texas, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Norfolk, Va., Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, San Jose, Calif., St. Cloud, Minn., St. Louis, Syracuse, N.Y., Terre Haute, Ind. and Washington.  

Feeding Our Future is funded by the Sodexo Foundation, the anti-hunger charitable arm of Sodexo, Inc. Sodexo employees work closely with local hunger relief organizations, vendor partners and client accounts to prepare and distribute the meals to children at local feeding sites. This resourceful program donates food and labor necessary to provide summer lunches to children who would otherwise go hungry. Sodexo pays all administrative costs of the Foundation to ensure that all money raised is directed to those in need.

The Sodexo Foundation supports innovative programs to help children and families in the United States who are at-risk of hunger. To make a contribution to the fight against hunger or for more information, please visit www.sodexofoundation.org.

About Sodexo

Sodexo in North America

Sodexo, Inc. (www.sodexoUSA.com), leading Quality of Daily Life Solutions company in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, delivers On Site Service Solutions in Corporate, Education, Health Care, Government, and Remote Site segments, as well as Motivation Solutions such as Esteem Pass. Sodexo, Inc., headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md., funds all administrative costs for the Sodexo Foundation (www.SodexoFoundation.org), an independent charitable organization that, since its founding in 1999, has made more than $15 million in grants to fight hunger in America. Visit the corporate blog at www.sodexoUSA.com/blog.

Sodexo, world leader in Quality of Daily Life Solutions

Quality of Life plays an important role in the progress of individuals and the performance of organizations. Based on this conviction, Sodexo acts as the strategic partner for companies and institutions that place a premium on performance and employee well-being, as it has since Pierre Bellon founded the company in 1966. Sharing the same passion for service, Sodexo's 380,000 employees in 80 countries design, manage and deliver an unrivaled array of On Site Service Solutions and Motivation Solutions. Sodexo has created a new form of service business that contributes to the fulfillment of its employees and the economic, social and environmental development of the communities, regions and countries in which it operates.

SOURCE Sodexo

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