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LATE PROGRAM INFORMATION 2/16/2018 1:09:05 PM Page 14 of 20 The Donation Station program provides an additional revenue stream to maintain ethnic and economic diversity as outlined in the Town of Carrboro’s Board Priority A. Our Donation Station partner at the Carrboro Farmers Market, Refugee Community Partnership, is a place that emphasizes how culinary traditions are a powerful way to celebrate and preserve cultural heritage and identity. The Donation Station program also enhances and sustains quality of life/place issues for everyone as outlined in the Town of Carrboro’s Board Priority E. Farmer Foo dshare has spent time cultivating relationships with partner agencies through shared meals, cooking demonstrations, and gatherings. Through our years of partnership, we have learned that participants want a more sustainable way to contribute to and make decisions about their own health. They have specifically requested access to more fresh produce on a regular basis, along with any printed fresh food educational materials created by Farmer Foodshare. f) Who is your target population of individuals to benefit from this program and how will they be identified and connected with the program? Farmer Foodshare partners with agencies that serve populations in need: children, the elderly, refugees, individuals with disabilities and mental illness, most of whom are food insecure. Agencies are selected in conjunction with the farmers markets in Orange County with a focus on urgent hunger and persistent need. Diverse groups are intentionally chosen. We work with a range of agencies across the county, which distribute the fresh food we connect them with to a diverse demographic. We intentionally partner with agencies that support the most urgent hunger and lowest income populations and make sure that these agencies have an ongoing relationship with our farmers market partners. We annually verify the demographics our partner agencies serve and work to ensure that the voices of our clients are heard and represented in our program planning. We are a community owned and operated group – and we believe that is the key to our continued presence in the Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro community. When sourcing food from local farmers, we are also intentionally diverse. We work with farmers who have been left out of “the system”, specifically with USDA defined “Limited Resource, Socially Disadvantaged and Beginning” farmers. These are farmers that are not eligible for traditional farm support and subsidies, yet who produce an enormous amount of healthy food in our communities. We believe that it is important to help both local farmers, as well as individuals and agencies that do not have access to resources. We believe that if we can introduce these groups to one another – the farmers, the agencies, and the individual recipients, that the Orange County network of community services and relationships will be strengthened. So far, we have seen this to be the case – where farmers who formerly knew nothing about hunger in our county, suddenly began growing food to donate. Our farmers at market are often generous to provide special items at a deep discount, because they know it will go to help feed the children at TABLE, or the mentally ill adults at Club Nova. And most partner agencies that want to buy