LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. \u2014 Hundreds of people lined up outside the Harry Chapin Food Bank distribution site in Lehigh Acres Monday morning, some arriving three hours before the 9 a.m. opening to secure their weekly groceries. Among them were special guests from FC Naples and Florida Blue, who came to launch a new community partnership aimed at addressing growing food insecurity in the area.<\/p>\n
“Nobody decides today is the day that they’re going to wake up and become food insecure for themselves or their family,” said Phillip Lee from Florida Blue.<\/p>\n
Click here to see Lehigh Acres Community Correspondent Victoria Quevedo speak with Florida Blue and FC Naples. <\/p>\n
FC Naples partners with Florida Blue and Harry Chapin Food Bank to tackle food insecurity<\/p>\n
“With the government shutdown, with SNAP benefits being reduced and suspended, we are seeing neighbors and residents continue to come out all centered around food,” Lee said.<\/p>\n
The soccer team has partnered with the insurance company and Harry Chapin Food Bank to launch their “Goals for Food” campaign. Under the partnership, Florida Blue will make a donation to the food bank every time FC Naples scores a goal during the next home season.<\/p>\n
The donations will support the food bank’s mission to serve 250,000 people each year, a number that continues to rise as more families face food insecurity.<\/p>\n
FC Naples Coach Matt Poland said the partnership encourages his players to better understand their community by getting involved directly, including volunteering at Monday’s food distribution.<\/p>\n
“They’re wearing a crest representing this community. They need to understand what’s good about the community where there’s people struggling in the community,” Poland said.<\/p>\n
The Goals for Food campaign officially launches with FC Naples’ next home season.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. \u2014 Hundreds of people lined up outside the Harry Chapin Food Bank distribution site in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,32628,32626,14616,264,32627,25001,356,22827,11732,1521],"class_list":["post-51728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-community-partnership","tag-fc-naples","tag-florida-blue","tag-fox-4","tag-goals-for-food-campaign","tag-harry-chapin-food-bank","tag-lee-county","tag-lehigh-acres-florida","tag-snap-benefits","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}