DANIA BEACH, Fla. — This week’s “Good News South Florida” story begins behind the mic at Cox Media in Hollywood, where Local 10 community relations director Mayte Padron was invited to in March to record a special message for Women’s History Month.
“Women lead by example and they inspire,” Padron said.
Dania Beach Mayor Joyce Davis was also there and shared something that had transpired, just two days before at a commission meeting.
“I was so excited when I saw that Z had applied for the city of Dania Beach community grants fund,” Davis said.
“Z” is Zeina Zein-Wolland, who is the founder and president of Mobile School Pantry, a nonprofit that provides nutritious foods to children and their families at low-income schools.
Collins Elementary School in Dania Beach is one of 30 schools served by Mobile School Pantry.
Mom of four Kendra Hoag is among the families who shop for groceries at Mobile School Pantry.
“It feels great to be able to feed them healthy food so they are able to grow like they’re supposed to,” she said.
As you can imagine, it takes a lot of time and money to feed thousands of people.
“We are servicing more than 7,000 individuals throughout Broward County,” Zein-Wolland said.
“But when she didn’t get the full amount of the funding, I felt like, you know, we can do better,” Davis said.
And we did do better!
We’ve featured Zein-Wolland before on Local 10, so she wasn’t surprised to see us at Collins Elementary.
But she couldn’t have imagined this.
Zein-Wolland received $2,500 of the $9,000 she had requested for Mobile School Pantry, but Local 10 was able to present her with the remaining $6,500 thanks to “Good News South Florida.”
Zein-Wolland said it costs the nonprofit $30 a family, which amounts to 216 families that will be well-fed with the newly acquired funds.
“And also for the families to see that the community stands by us. We’re not just doing this alone. It takes so many partners to bring this together,” Zein-Wolland said.
From one community leader lifting her voice at a radio station to another advocating for the health of her extended family, that’s good work that bears good fruit.
A member of Cox Media Group also contributed an additional $2,000 to the cause, so altogether, Mobile School Pantry received $11,000.
Zein-Wolland said all of the money will feed 370 families, including 740 kids.
And while on the subject of school, we are looking to honor a deserving teacher in May. Click here for more information on that.
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