Sam Galloway Jr. & Friends 8th Annual Soup Kitchen Benefit will be held

Tuesday, March 1 at the Sam Galloway Ford dealership located off Boy Scout

Drive in Fort Myers. Cocktails will be served at 6 p.m. followed by dinner at 7:30 p.m.

Maestro Andrew Kurtz will be conducting the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra with

a patriotic music selection.

Last year’s event sold out with more than 600 guests attending to help raise

$800,000 for Community Cooperative Ministries Inc., the umbrella agency for

the Soup Kitchen and Customer Choice Food Pantries, Meals on Wheels, Community

Montessori Preschool and Social and Homeless Services. Each year, local

restaurants, companies and individuals donate the southern-style menu

including barbeque chicken and pork, fried chicken, coleslaw, fried shrimp,

cheese grits, swamp cabbage, gourmet meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gumbo, black-

eyed peas, rice, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, fresh green beans,

homemade cookies and gourmet chocolates.

The goal of this annual event is to raise as much money as possible for area

residents in need.

“Our area has continued to have one of the worst foreclosure and unemployment

rates,” said Sam Galloway Jr. “As we continue this trend for the foreseeable

future, more of our neighbors are going to need our help and I plan to help

them.”

Galloway wants to ensure that programs remain in place to help Southwest

Florida’s growing population of hungry be able to find a nutritious meal.

Eight years ago, he gathered friends in the local restaurant community and

beyond to donate their time and services toward a community fundraiser for

local homeless and hungry. The event has grown each year with guests who come

together for one evening in the Service Department of Galloway Ford. All the

monies raised are used to help those in Southwest Florida.

“Last year we asked people to do something and they did,” said Sarah Owen, CEO

of CCMI. “With the money we raised last year we were not only able to continue

to help our community but also develop new and innovative ways to fight hunger

and homelessness. The community did something for us and we did something for

the community.”

According to Owen, those things included opening Southwest Florida’s first

customer centered Choice Marketplace, establishing Baby U, beginning work on

transforming the Soup Kitchen into a community caf, serving more schools last

summer with CCMI’s Mobile Food Pantry, establishing Cape Coral’s first

marketplace and soon its own community caf and adding more schools and

students to its weekend backpack program.

“CCMI’s Montessori Preschool prepared my daughter to not only be ready to

attend kindergarten, but also be more advanced than her peers,” said Chrystal

Barnes. “The first weeks of school she was actually bored because they were

teaching skills she had learned two years earlier at CCMI.”

“The latest astonishing statistics we are seeing is that over 700 Lee County

school children are considered homeless,” Owen said. “And if they are

homeless, I guarantee they are also hungry.”

CCMI has been refocusing their hunger-fighting efforts toward implementing

sustainable customer choice-centered models for long-term hunger elimination.

This re-examination of the traditional soup kitchen setting changes both the

mindset of those who serve and those being served, as well as the physical

spaces and delivery model created for the distribution of food. This concept

has been adopted in other parts of the country including Colorado and Ohio

with overwhelming success.

CCMI’s Everyday Caf and Marketplace concept makes food more easily available

to everyone in the community who is hungry. The market model also decreases

the stigma associated with standing in line for a hot meal or groceries and

reduces significant waste in the preselected grocery bag model.

“We can and did make a difference,” said Galloway. “When hunger affects our

community it impacts everyone of us in some way and if everyone of us does a

small part to impact change, change will happen.”

“Two dollars can feed a family for a day,” Galloway concluded. “We are all

feeling the effects of this economy, but not doing anything for our local

neighbors in need is not an option for me and I can guarantee anyone who

donates to this event is truly making a difference.”

Tax-deductible sponsorship opportunities are available from $5,000 and tickets

are $150 each. For more information or tickets, visit www.ccmileecounty.com or

call CCMI at 239-332-7687, ext. 107.

CCMI provides over 14,000 meals each month through their Soup Kitchen and

Meals on Wheels programs. The nonprofit agency also educates 40 children in

their Community Montessori Preschool, provides weekend backpacks full of food

to more than 2,500 children each school year and oversees a mobile food pantry

and everyday choice marketplace.

CCMI serves Fort Myers and the greater Lee County area, including Bonita

Springs, Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres. The Soup Kitchen serves a noontime meal

six days a week to men, women and children. In addition, CCMI prepares and

delivers nutritious packaged meals and beverages for the homebound hungry,

offers customer choice food pantries and mobile food pantries that provide

emergency groceries to families in need, serves two nutritious meals a day for

the children in their Montessori Preschool and oversees a backpack program for

local schoolchildren who would otherwise receive little to no food on weekends.

For more information and available sponsorship opportunities, visit

www.ccmileecounty.com or call 239-332-7687.