Celebration Time!!!!

Today was a day for celebration. With the official effective date of the merger being September 1st, we brought together all of our employees, members of our board of directors and a number of our long term volunteers to celebrate the coming together of St Mary’s and Westside Food Banks. The program had presentations by David Postal - Chairman of the Board of Directors, Barry McBride -Vice Chairman of board and Bill Ennis – former Executive Director of Westside and now Executive Director Emeritus of the Alliance. The senior staff all made short presentations on their departments highlighting the key integration activities in their areas as well as identifying their goals for the future. I then spoke about the history of the two organizations. We were very fortunate to have John van Hengel, founder of St Mary’s and recognized as the “Father of Food Banking” join us. John is still recovering from a recent fall but his presence was very inspirational to all of us. I then talked about the challenge we had in front of us to be able to meet the growing need of our community. Over 860,000 Arizonans currently live below the federal poverty. By 2010 that number is expected to reach close to 1 million people. Those folks are the ones who turn to the food banks and the agency partners we work with for support. I firmly belief we now have a better chance of keeping pace with that growth as one organization versus two independents.

It was a great celebration and a terrific kickoff for the new St Mary’s/Westside Food Bank Alliance.