The International Foodservice Editorial Council (IFEC) and The J.M. Smucker Company’s Away From Home division are pleased to announce Bridge House as the recipient of IFEC’s second annual Food For Good Award. The organization was recognized at the IFEC Annual Conference on October 25 with a $1,000 donation.

Bridge House plays a crucial role in addressing homelessness within the Boulder community. The organization’s mission is to address immediate survival needs of homeless and low-income individuals and provide resources which lead to employment, housing, personal stability and healing. By providing meals as an entry point, Bridge House is able to engage its homeless and low-income clients in more in-depth services through a detailed intake assessment. Its priority is to provide a range of comprehensive services that offer a concrete path out of homelessness.

Bridge House’s Community Table Kitchen provides nutritious meals three times a day, six days a week throughout the year for homeless and working poor individuals. In addition to providing meals, Community Table Kitchen has a culinary arts training program for 18 ready-to-work trainees who are training for a career in food services. Trainees work 29 hours a week of paid, on-the-job training learning food preparation, safe food handling and customer service skills as a stepping stone into the mainstream workforce. Through Community Table Kitchen social enterprise the organization runs two cafes at Naropa University, caters private events and provide wholesale products for local customers.

The recognition, sponsored by The J.M. Smucker Company’s Away From Home division, was designed to shine light on non-profit organizations whose work with food is making significant contributions to improving lives in the communities they serve. This year’s recipient was selected from Boulder, Colorado, the host city for the 2017 IFEC annual conference. The host city changes annually and local organizations will continue to be recognized in years to come.

“IFEC’s core values have always emphasized what we, as editors and public relations professionals, can do to elevate the foodservice community, by networking together to share industry best practices, offer professional development to our respective audiences and provide scholarships to students interested in foodservice communications. The Food for Good Award is a natural extension of that passion and priority,” says IFEC president Patty Fitzgerald, who is the editor of School Nutrition magazine and senior director of digital and print communications for the School Nutrition Association. “There are so many terrific non-profit organizations that, while not necessarily in the foodservice business, are finding ways to make lives better through programs that involve food. It is especially meaningful for IFEC, in partnership with our friends at Smucker’s Away From Home, to recognize such worthy organizations making a real difference in the host city of our annual conference.”