Olympian Leads Food For The Poor 5K Walk/Run to Feed Record Number

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Nov. 29, 2012) – Approximately 700 South Floridians gathered at Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach on Saturday, Nov. 17, to stomp out hunger alongside Olympic medalist Yohan Blake. Food For The Poor’s 5K Walk/Run For Hunger raised enough money to feed 1,500 destitute children and their families in the Caribbean and Latin America for a year.

Blake, a Jamaican Olympic Gold and Silver medalist and Jason Martinez, co-anchor for WPLG-TV ABC Local 10 Morning News and Local 10 News at Noon, handed out bottles of WATA brand bottled water and motivated participants across the finish line. The racers ranged between 8 and 78 years old.
 
“I know what it is to be hungry and so I respect what Food For The Poor is doing,” said Blake, one of the world’s fastest sprinters.

Thanks to the charity’s low administrative ratio and purchasing power, Food For The Poor can feed a family of four for $14.60 a month. Donations to this effort are accepted at www.FoodForThePoor.org/walk.

The fastest male was Kevin Channer with a time of 17:45.2. The fastest female was Ann Rodriguez with a time of 24:12.2.

Additional race results are available online at http://tinyurl.com/cx9ctuy.

Cans of food donated by 5K Walk/Run participants and a check to purchase turkeys were presented to “Big Mama,” Essie Reed, founder of Team of Life nonprofit, to benefit needy families in South Florida in time for Thanksgiving.

The 5K Walk/Run was presented by Winn-Dixie.  Event sponsors included Barefoot Wine & Bubbly, Bru’s Room, The Consul General of Jamaica, Corner Bakery Cafe, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Humana, Kona Ice, KPA Promotion, Muffuletta, PNC, Polyglass, Runners Edge, Sun-Sentinel, TeamReliv, The WOW Factory, Tijuana Flats, WATA, Wells Fargo and World of Beer.

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. 

For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.