Smithfield Foods, Farmland Foods Donate $50,000
To Help Fund Crete's TeamMates Mentoring Program
Farmland Foods Inc. and it’s parent company, Smithfield Foods Inc., announced today they are donating $50,000 to help fund the TeamMates Mentoring Program for Crete’s middle and high school students during the 2011-12 school year.
Smithfield’s Learners to Leaders® educational initiative will form a new partnership with TeamMates, which has been mentoring Crete students for the past 12 years. Farmland Foods presented a check for $50,000 to Crete Public Schools and TeamMates representatives at Crete High School.
The Learners to Leaders program is a collaborative effort of Smithfield Foods, its independent operating companies, such as Farmland Foods, and local educational partners. Learners to Leaders focuses on people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have the desire to succeed, but don’t yet have the skills to overcome their challenges, whether academic, social or economic. Learners to Leaders also has educational partnerships in Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and South Dakota.
The TeamMates Mentoring Program was founded in 1991 by former University of Nebraska Head Football Coach Tom Osborne and his wife Nancy. The program matches a student with an adult volunteer mentor to provide one hour of individual mentoring each week during the school year. Activities during the mentoring hour range from homework assignments to sharing common interests to simply engaging in conversation.
TeamMates began with 22 Nebraska football players mentoring middle school students in the Lincoln Public Schools, and today has grown to more than 4,000 mentor-student matches in more than 120 communities across Nebraska, Iowa and California.
Farmland Foods Inc. provides a broad range of pork products for retail and foodservice customers in the United States and abroad. Its primary lines of business include fresh pork, case-ready pork, hams, bacon, fresh sausage, processed sausage, lunchmeat and specialty sausages. Smithfield Foods acquired the company in 2003.
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