Key Food Owners Provide Gifts for Turkey and Ukraine Relief
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (June 20, 2023) Food For The Poor’s (FFTP) efforts to help families recovering from the Turkey earthquake and the war in Ukraine received a huge boost, thanks to longtime donors to the charity.
Eliza Diaz presented two checks on Monday for $30,000 each to FFTP Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Khouri at the charity’s Coconut Creek headquarters.
Eliza and Juan Diaz own and operate more than a dozen Key Food supermarkets in South Florida, and additional stores in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The gifts presented today were a combination of donations from their employees, business partners and from the Diazes.
Eliza Diaz said she and her husband believe, as the Lord says, that what was given to you freely, you should give freely.
“We feel extremely blessed to be able to do this,” she said. “It’s extremely sad what’s going on in Turkey and Ukraine. To not know where you’re going to be waking up the next day, from having everything to having nothing and waiting for someone to be kind and give you food and the bare necessities, that’s what always gets to us.”
The earthquakes and aftershocks that struck Turkey and Syria beginning on February 6 killed more than 57,000 people and left more than 3 million homeless in the region, according to news reports.
Immediately after the earthquakes, FFTP launched a campaign that included radio partners to raise funds to provide assistance. In Turkey, FFTP’s generous donors provided funding for three water treatment systems with partner Water Mission, each providing 10,000 gallons of treated water for up to 5,000 people daily.
“We’re so grateful to donors Eliza and Juan Diaz and their Key Food family for opening their hearts to those who are suffering in Turkey and the Ukraine and continue to need our help,” Khouri said.
While FFTP’s mission primarily is to serve in the Caribbean and Latin America, the charity has responded in the past to disasters elsewhere in the world. For example, FFTP worked with longtime partner Feed My Starving Children in 2022 to respond to the war in Ukraine, providing support for MannaPack rice meals.
The Diazes have partnered with FFTP in the past with their supermarkets as presenting sponsors for the charity’s Join The Pack food-packing events. Their employees and family members have comprised one of the largest packing teams at the events.
The Diazes traveled with the charity to Guatemala in 2018. In 2019, their Join The Pack team raised funds to build two homes for families seeking safe shelter in Sansur, Guatemala.
In 2020, their stores collected relief items to support FFTP’s response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota in Central America. And they did the same for Haiti following the August 2021 earthquake.
Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of hungry children and families living in poverty primarily in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, water, medicine, educational materials, homes, support for vulnerable children, care for the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Michael Turnbell
Communications
954-471-0928
[email protected]
