The Safeway Foundation Inc. has signed on with the Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBH) to sponsor the placement of 81 Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Adopt-A-School kits in classrooms in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C.

Distribution of the kid-friendly nutrition education materials were made possible by a contribution from the Safeway Foundation toward PBH's Campaign for Children's Health, with the specification that the donation be used for the purchase of the Adopt-A-School program kits for schools in close proximity to Safeway stores.

Scheduled to arrive in the classrooms the second week of October, each school will receive three Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Creative Pockets Colorful Eating Celebrations kits and 500 bookmarks to distribute as they like. Each kit contains one teacher apron, six teaching cards, 116 flashcards, and nine reproducible masters.

"The kits make age-appropriate nutrition education easier for teachers and more fun for their students, said Greg Ten Eyck, chairman of the Safeway Foundation/Eastern Division.

"I knew that including Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Creative Pockets kits in classrooms would be beneficial to children and their teachers, especially since the materials will arrive at no cost to them," said Ten Eyck. Anything that helps kids benefits the whole community and Safeway too, so this was an easy project to support."

Elizabeth Pivonka, PBH's president/c.e.o., hopes other grocers will rise to Safeway's challenge and sponsor Adopt-A-School kits for their local schools, too. "The three different curriculum kits available in the Adopt-A-School program offer an inexpensive, customizable way for a company to generate goodwill by supporting local schools," said Pivonka, who praised Safeway's commitment toward supporting the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters initiative.

For more information on the "Adopt-A-School Program," contact PBH Sales Representative Don Schuler at dschuler@pbhfoundation.org.