Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen Receives $1 Million Donation
Donation will provide an additional 500,000 meals needed throughout the Bay Area
April 24, 2020 - SAN JOSE, CA - The COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges for people and businesses around the world. It has also highlighted amazing acts of kindness and incredible generosity from companies and partners to support our communities.
Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen has received a $1 million donation from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen to continue providing nutritious meals and supporting families, children, seniors, veterans, and communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the Bay Area.
Gisela Bushey, Loaves & Fishes’ Chief Executive Officer, said, “Ripple and Chris’ generosity and support means the difference between hunger and hope for tens of thousands of our neighbors in need. Their $1 million donation will provide 500,000 meals that are so desperately needed throughout the Bay Area.”
Loaves & Fishes, which provides free, nutritious meals to anyone in need throughout Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, has seen requests for food assistance triple since shelter-in-place was announced in March.
Bushey went on to say, “In a ‘normal month,’ we provide over 100,000 hot and prepared, nutritious meals to families in need. We are now living and working in a ‘new normal’ of considerably greater need. This current crisis is shining a light on how incredibly precarious people’s food and living expenses are in the Bay Area.”
Ripple agrees in its post, noting that despite the Bay Area’s vibrant economy and abundance of wealth, one in five people have less than $400 in their bank accounts for necessities such as meals. For them, and for our regional economy and the civic and social fabric of the Bay Area, COVID-19 presents not only a dire immediate threat, but also a pernicious long-term danger. The scale and immediacy of the situation demand extreme generosity. Ripple and its co-founder Chris Larsen have donated a total of $5 million to five local food banks and meal service providers.
“The rise in food insecurity during COVID-19 threatens our most vulnerable communities. Bay Area organizations, such as Loaves & Fishes, are mounting special efforts to help provide meals and combat hunger to those who will be most heavily impacted by the pandemic,” said Chris Larsen, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple.
To join the many valued individuals and organizations that make up Loaves & Fishes’ Giving Family, please visit: https://www.loavesfishes.org/donatenow
ABOUT LOAVES & FISHES FAMILY KITCHEN
Founded in 1980, the mission of Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen is to provide hot nutritious meals that are prepared, delivered and served to hungry and homeless families, children, seniors, veterans, students, and the disabled community. We partner with 55 nonprofits to provide meals at 79 locations, including meal service sites, low-income senior retirement centers, community centers, homeless & domestic violence shelters, transitional programs, faith-based organizations, schools and afterschool programs. Loaves & Fishes operates two centralized kitchens in Morgan Hill and has a fleet of trucks including three specialized hot/cold temperature-controlled delivery trucks that allow it to deliver an average of 21,000 meals per week across the Bay Area radius from Gilroy to South San Francisco.
ABOUT RIPPLE
Ripple is a technology company that provides the most efficient solutions to send money globally using the power of blockchain technology. Our vision is to enable the world to move value like information moves today—the Internet of Value. Ripple is the only enterprise blockchain company today with products in commercial use. Our global payments network, RippleNet, includes over 300 financial institutions across 40 countries and six continents. We work with regulators, governments and central banks—not against them—to improve the way the world moves money.