Community Foundation of the Ozarks

CFO affiliates and their local food programs completed the Ozarks Million Dollar Hunger Challenge II this fall by raising $125,000 to match an equivalent challenge grant from the Walmart State Giving Foundation to Ozarks Food Harvest.

In all, 23 of the CFO’s 44 affiliates participated in the Hunger Challenge, which leverages the total of $250,000 at a 10:1 ratio of buying, transporting and distributing food through the OFH network of feeding programs and pantries.

The Walmart State Giving Foundation awarded a $125,000 grant to Ozarks Food Harvest for a second challenge opportunity earlier this year after last year’s success with a $100,000 grant for the original Ozarks Million Dollar Hunger Challenge.

In this year’s Ozarks Million Dollar Hunger Challenge II, 25 food programs across the region worked with the 23 CFO affiliates to raise matching funds by the end of September.

Grant presentations, shown in the gallery below, have been made with affiliate and food program leaders in a number of the communities over the past month. The participating affiliates were: Aurora, Bolivar, Cassville, DACO, Dallas, Dent, El Dorado Springs, Finley River, Houston, Jacks Fork, Lockwood, Marshfield, Monett, Mount Vernon, Mountain Grove, Neosho, Nixa, Oregon County, Seymour, Stockton, Southwest Missouri, Taney County and West Plains.

“We appreciate the cooperative spirit between our affiliate foundations and their local food pantries to jointly tackle this matching grant opportunity,” CFO President Brian Fogle said.

This program began in response to a national report  – “Hunger in America 2010” – describing the extent to which hunger plagues Ozarks communities. An estimated 155,000 Ozarkers face chronic hunger issues, according to the report.

“We are grateful for the funding from the Walmart State Giving Program which allows us to leverage hunger relief support to our local Ozarks communities,” said Bart Brown, CEO at Ozarks Food Harvest.

“There’s a growing population of clients who are not eligible for government assistance such as WIC or the National School Lunch Program. This ‘gap’ truly relies on our member pantries and feeding sites to help feed their families,” Brown said. “The current child food insecurity rate is sobering. More than a quarter of our children — five percent higher than the national rate — now face hunger, or do not know where their next meal is coming from.”

Ozarks Food Harvest is the Feeding America food bank for southwest Missouri, serving more than 300 hunger relief organizations across 28 Ozarks counties in addition to long-term relief sites in Joplin. The Food Bank reaches 20,000 individuals weekly and distributes one million pounds of food monthly. OFH was named the 2011 Small Business of the Year by the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce. Learn more at ozarksfoodharvest.org and at facebook.com/ozarksfoodharvest.

On Tuesday night, the Finley River Community Foundation and members of the Ozark and Christian County community celebrated a decade of good work with a reception at Touchstone Counseling.

Board members, donors and supporters sipped on wine, munched on delicious hors d’oeuvres, and prepared for a second decade of grantmaking and community building. The FRCF was established on May 17, 2001. The reception-though delayed-was a momentous occasion for the hardworking board, whose achievements in the last year alone have included reaching the $1 million mark in total assets and achieving 100 percent participation among board members in the Legacy Leadership Challenge, in which members were encouraged to make donations to their communities a part of their permanent bequests or estate planning.

CFO wants to congratulate and thank the FRCF board for its hard work, and looks forward to another 10 years of success!

There’s no denying that it has been a heat bomb of a summer in the Ozarks. The sweltering temperatures have made outdoor work miserable, and keeping living things alive has been something of a challenge.

With that in mind, students in the Chadwick R-1 School District should be doubly impressed by the transformation that awaits them when the new school year begins August 22. And a number of community volunteers, students and school staff from the small, rural town in eastern Christian County have put in the sweat equity to make sure it gets done.

With the help of a $19,989 Coover grant the Chadwick campus, instead of a hardscrabble space between school buildings, will now have a fully functional outdoor classroom and Ozark Mountain herb garden. With a little financial boost, students, volunteers and staffers from Lowe’s in nearby Ozark have turned a previously useless patch of gravel and grass into one of the most innovative classroom projects in southern Missouri.

With the additional help of a $5,000 Heroes Grant from Lowe’s–which included materials, plants, furnishings and expert advice–multi-tiered levels of decks and sitting space have been erected where previously there was limestone chat and scrub brush. Umbrellas, a shade awning and multiple access points make the space comfortable and useful for all students. (more…)