Author: sHq_LoGiNz

AUSTIN, Texas, July 21, 2026 /3BL/ – Whole Foods Market Foundation is excited to announce over $2.2 million in funding across three transformative projects impacting more than 570,000 people in Ghana and the United States. Throughout the year, the Foundation provides funding to help its partners improve nutrition and create opportunities for financial stability. Each project is community-led and designed to create lasting impact in communities worldwide.

Together, this quarter’s grants reach more than 573,000 people: 370,000+ students connected to garden-based learning, 202,000 students gaining access to scratch-cooked school meals, and 1,200 smallholder farmers getting capital and market access for the very first time. The three investments look different on the surface, but they’re grounded in the same belief that real, lasting change in how communities grow, access, and prepare healthy food starts with the people and institutions doing the daily work. Learn more about each project below:

Chef Ann Foundation | $1,500,000

Transforming 110 Schools to Scratch-Cooked Meals for 202,000 Students

Most school cafeterias in the U.S. aren’t serving scratch-cooked meals because no one cares. They’re doing it because the system wasn’t built for anything else. Processed food, bought in bulk and reheated, became the default because of tight budgets, limited staff, and a lack of culinary training and equipment. The kids in those cafeterias spend their school years eating meals that fall short in nutrition.

Chef Ann Foundation is a long-time Foundation partner doing the hard work of changing that default, one school district at a time. Building on the Foundation’s January 2026 investments in their Salad Bars to Schools program and Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship, this $1.5 million, three-year grant goes deeper into two programs that have already shown they can drive real, lasting change.

Get Schools Cooking works with K–12 school districts from the inside out — providing hands-on training, comprehensive assessments, and practical support to make the shift from heat-and-serve to scratch-cooked meals. More than just a training program, it tackles procurement, equipment, staffing, and menus together.

The Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship is a 13-month program for school food professionals who want to lead change in their own districts. Fellows build skills in leadership, advocacy, and culinary practice. They come out on the other side ready to transform their programs from the inside, and many go on to mentor and inspire peers across the country.

Together, these two programs will reach over 202,000 students across 110 schools in 5 districts, with 16 new Fellowship participants joining a growing national network of school food leaders, resulting in more kids sitting down to a real, scratch-cooked meal.

Life Lab | $123,280

Building the Infrastructure That Connects 370,000+ Students to Garden-Based Learning

School garden programs work best when the people running them aren’t doing it alone. Yet across the country, that’s exactly what’s happening. Garden educators work in silos, without peer connections, shared knowledge, or ongoing support that keep programs thriving. When these educators don’t have a community to learn from, even the best-resourced gardens stall out. Most importantly, the bigger opportunity of helping kids build real relationships with fresh food and healthy eating never reaches its full potential.

Life Lab, based in Santa Cruz, California, has been a Foundation partner and a leader in garden-based learning for over a decade. This $123,280 grant supports the 2026 School Garden Support Organization (SGSO) Leadership Institute, a week-long, hands-on professional development program that brings together 40 school garden professionals from 20 organizations across the country. Over the course of the week, participants visit model programs, learn from each other, and build the kind of relationships that keep going long after the program wraps through quarterly check-ins that keep the cohort connected and accountable.

The 40 people trained through this year’s Institute collectively support 80–100+ school gardens, reaching an estimated 370,000+ students every year. Beyond that, institute graduates bring what they’ve learned back to the broader SGSO Network, a community of 4,600 people representing over 2,000 organizations nationwide. That ripple effect is transformative. This grant helps build the connective tissue that lets garden-based learning, and the fresh, healthy food experiences it creates for kids, grow at scale.

True Farmer | $600,000

Growing Smallholder Income 16x in Ghana — From $0.30/Day to $5.00/Day

For smallholder farmers in rural Ghana, the path to a living income isn’t blocked by a lack of effort or ability, rather by a lack of access. Without something to put up as collateral, farmers can’t get the loans they need to grow higher-value crops. And without established buyers for their harvests, even a great growing season doesn’t translate into reliable income. The result: families, most of them headed by women, remain stuck at $0.30 a day, with no clear way forward.

True Farmer, a non-profit based in New Longoro, Ghana, was built to change that. Their RISE model — Regenerative Agroforestry, Inclusive Financing, Savings Groups, and Entrepreneurship — takes on every piece of the problem at once: giving farmers the inputs, training, financial tools, and direct market connections they need to build something sustainable.

This three-year, $600,000 grant will provide collateral-free input loans to 1,200 entry-level and landless smallholder farmers to grow herbs and spices. True Farmer will buy their harvests directly and sell to agro-processing companies, cutting out the market access gap that keeps farmers stuck in survival mode. The expected outcome says it all: daily income projected to grow from $0.30 to around $5.00. That 16x increase strengthens families, communities, and the regional food system around them.

This investment reflects the Foundation’s deep belief that financial empowerment and resilient food systems go hand in hand. When farmers have real access to capital and reliable markets, the benefits flow outward to households, neighbors, and the broader community.

Since 2005, Whole Foods Market Foundation has invested over $220 million, supporting over 18,700 partner organizations and schools in 83 countries around the world.

For more information, visit wholefoodsmarketfoundation.org/funding-announcements. 

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ABOUT WHOLE FOODS MARKET FOUNDATION

Whole Foods Market Foundation is on a mission to nourish people by advancing food security, improving nutrition and strengthening resilient food systems. The registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on the Foundation’s work, visit wholefoodsmarketfoundation.org. For ongoing news and updates, follow Whole Foods Market Foundation on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Sandra Mariscal, Director of Philanthropy
Sandra.Mariscal@wholefoods.com

This month, Cascale and Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) convened brands in Denver ahead of American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) Traceability & Sustainability Conference.

The organizations brought together members and industry stakeholders at REI’s community space, opening with a joint brands workshop. The week marked Cascale CEO Ying McGuire’s first major in-person engagement with members since stepping into the role, underscoring the organization’s continued focus on deepening relationships across the value chain.

The joint event saw 46 brand, retailer, and industry representatives attend the workshop on SLCP’s Converged Assessment Framework and the Higg Facility Social & Labor Module (CAF/FSLM) and Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD). Brand representatives from Cascale’s membership sparked strong peer discussion, giving attendees a practical look at how peer companies are putting the tools to work and reinforcing the value of the Cascale-SLCP integration.

The following two days, Cascale joined AAFA’s Traceability & Sustainability Conference, which drew 330 attendees representing brands, manufacturers, service providers, and industry stakeholders. Cascale’s manager of public affairs Gabriele Ballero joined Policy Hub director Marina Prados Espínola for a panel on the current state of EU due diligence. Ballero outlined Cascale’s approach to supporting members as regulation evolves, emphasizing that while legislation sets expectations, industry collaboration, common methodologies, and tools such as the Higg Index and Better Buying help companies operationalize due diligence consistently and at scale.

Across both events, Cascale and SLCP representatives held meetings identifying strategic touchpoints with members, prospects, and partners. The Denver visit also included networking events hosted by Retraced, Bureau Veritas/Oritain, AAFA, and the Human Rights Advocacy Program (HAP), further strengthening Cascale’s relationships across its wider ecosystem.

The week highlighted the value of continued collaboration across the industry and reinforced the importance of bringing stakeholders together to advance shared approaches to sustainability and social impact.

 

Thank you to everyone who shared their stories and videos for World Cleft Awareness Day 2026.

Smile Train is deeply moved by the incredible stories and messages shared by the global cleft community. Every contribution helped shine a light on the realities of living with a cleft and highlighted the experiences, challenges, and achievements that are often unseen. By opening up and sharing your journey, you helped raise awareness and remind others that they are not alone.

Each story was unique. Some reflected on overcoming challenges, while others celebrated milestones, shared words of encouragement, or spoke about the importance of support from family, friends, and healthcare teams. Together, these stories showed the many different ways a cleft can shape a person’s life and why greater awareness and acceptance matter.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch them yet, we encourage you to take a few moments to hear directly from the community. Every video and photo offers a personal perspective, and together they paint a powerful picture of resilience. They also remind us that behind every statistic is a person with their own experiences and aspirations.

Thank you for being part of World Cleft Awareness Day 2026. Whether you shared your own story, helped amplify someone else’s voice, or followed along and learned something new, you played a part in making this year’s campaign meaningful. Together, we’re helping build a world where everyone affected by cleft feels seen, understood, and supported.

Key Points

• Personal Safety Professional Eric Lord helps support safe operations across Marathon Petroleum’s terminals in Florida and North Carolina, the Electronic Work Permitting team, the Safe Driving team and major projects.
• Lord says safety leadership depends on staying present in the field, reinforcing proactive tools and helping employees keep hazards front of mind from task to task.
• He also emphasized the importance of audits, training, incident reviews and careful planning, including work completed during Hurricane Helene response efforts with zero injuries.

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National Safety Month offers an opportunity to highlight the people who help keep safety at the center of everything we do. Lead Personal Safety Professional Eric Lord supports safe operations by helping teams strengthen hazard awareness, reinforce safe work practices, cultivate a culture of safety and apply Marathon Petroleum’s safety standards across terminals, major projects and enterprise safety initiatives. His perspective reflects the focus, discipline and collaboration that support safe operations across the company.

Lord began his Marathon Petroleum career in 1998 as a terminal operator and moved into Safety five years later. He now supports southern midstream operations, including terminals in Florida and North Carolina, electronic work permitting, safe driving and major projects. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration with a specialty in accounting and a minor in finance and is a certified safety professional through the Board of Certified Safety Professionals.

Q: How would you summarize your primary responsibilities as a safety professional at Marathon?
A: My key responsibility is making sure everyone feels educated and empowered to own their own safety and looking out for others. I help ensure compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Marathon standards through auditing, training, inspections and project oversight. I also investigate incidents, develop corrective actions and share lessons learned across sites so we can prevent recurrence and keep improving.

Q: What motivates you to keep safety top of mind daily?
A: After so many years here, Marathon feels like a second family. I never want to see anything happen to one of my brothers or sisters, and that is what drives me every day to inform, educate and correct so everyone goes home safely.

Q: How do you help other employees remain focused from task to task?
A: I advocate for our behavior-based safety program because it helps drive better decisions and stronger habits. It’s a proactive, data-driven framework designed to prevent workplace incidents. Paired with our Big 3 safety questions, it keeps hazards front of mind and supports a safer way to work. I strive to stay present in the field, offering support or a sounding board whenever someone needs it.

Big 3 Questions to recognize and mitigate hazards 

Plan – What are you going to do?

• Do you have the right tools and steps to perform the job?
• Have you communicated the plan with others?

Evaluate – What could go wrong?

• What are the hazards that could cause an injury?
• Any unintended consequences of your actions?
• If something goes wrong, does everyone understand they can stop the job to reassess?

Prevent – What do we mitigate?

• What are we going to do to make sure we mitigate, prevent or eliminate any of these hazards from causing an injury?

Q: How has your role evolved as you’ve progressed in your safety career at Marathon?
A: Early on, my large territory meant a heavy focus on inspections and audits. Over time, territories realigned and the role evolved into more one-on-one conversations with employees and contractors where I’m reinforcing that safety leadership belongs to everyone, not just the safety professional.

Q: How do you use both technical safety expertise and business knowledge to manage complex risk?
A: Risk is always present in our industry. The goal is to eliminate it where possible and manage it wisely where needed and hold the line on zero injuries. That takes experience, sound judgment and listening closely to the people doing the work.

Q: Can you describe a project or situation where your safety input significantly influenced outcomes?
A: One of the efforts I’m most proud of was our response to Hurricane Helene in 2024. Teams came together to replace critical equipment and help restore fuel supply to the Tampa Bay area. By working together, maintaining strict energy-isolation practices and planning every lift carefully, we completed the work with zero injuries.

Q: What skills or personal traits are helpful for being an effective safety professional?
A: Strong safety work starts with strong people skills. You must tailor the message to the audience, be willing to listen and keep learning. In this field, there is always more to understand, and that mindset makes safety leadership stronger.