Washington School District feeds local community

1 / 4

Bags of packed produce assembled for a farm-to-table event in partnership with a group of local nonprofits at Washington High School. [Courtesy of Zach Brendza]

2 / 4

Tyreese Small from Washington High School's football team helps distribute food during a farm-to-table event in partnership with a group of local nonprofits at Washington High School. [Conner Goetz]

3 / 4

Tyreese Small and Blaise Naraskivitch from the Washington High School football team help distribute food during a farm-to-table event in partnership with a group of local nonprofits at Washington High School. [Conner Goetz]

4 / 4

Local volunteers, including Jalen Dubina (center) help distribute food during a farm-to-table event in partnership with a group of local nonprofits at Washington High School. [Conner Goetz]

[expand]

close

Washington School District officials were impressed by the strong turnout for a farm-to-table food distribution event last week, where more than 600 families received free produce thanks to a new partnership with a trio of local nonprofits.

The group, which is composed of the Highmark Foundation, the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank and the Westmoreland Food Bank, originally committed around 8,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables for the event, but arrived with more than 13,000 pounds, according to Highmark Public Relations Analyst Zach Brendza.

This allowed a team of district staff and student volunteers – including the majority of the varsity football squad – to hand out all 13,000 pounds of food in just over an hour on Thursday night.

Highmark has led almost 40 similar events across western Pennsylvania in recent weeks, distributing over 240,000 pounds of food to 12,500 families so far, according to Brendza.

Superintendent Alisa King said that she was excited and encouraged by the great community turnout for the event, which occurred simultaneously as district open house night.