Hi Casey,

We feel like we have a good plan worked out with a few partners in place and a couple more in our sights. Our biggest hurdle was the red tape inherent with working in the public schools. The second was finding an amenable school food service director with whom to work. We have worked around this by concentrating our efforts on summer feeding programs, which will allow us to work with the same sample of kids, but will have much more interaction time with the kids and fewer restrictions. 

In the way of necessary partnerships, we have multiple summer feeding sites open to us. Akron Children's Hospital has a local branch and two key people from there will be assisting us (that was the work around needed since we couldn't fund the assistance of a YSU dietetics professor).  We also have ties with the local TV station and a person who produces a local  dining/food show. When the time comes we'd like to make this a very high profile public issue.

A couple of other business connections I didn't mention: 1) I have two friends who are executives with Viking Range, a high end manufacture of stoves and other kitchen appliances. I have talked to them about lending some of their support. I'm not asking for money from them, just a little leverage to get their local distributor behind the effort. With that in place, I will go to Summer Garden to seek its support. If you are not familiar with that company, I think you will want to know more about them. I set up a meeting where Jamie Moore, Joe Bute, and others toured their bottling facility. 

I can give you more details Wednesday.

By the way, how much do you want me to talk about what we are doing at our site in North Lima? How much about Lordstown? I was planning a short Powerpoint about the development of our site and some recent projects of Goodness Grows, but I can forgo that. 

I will have a projector, laptop, and screen available for your use. Wireless as well.

Steve