Have you ever seen over 36,000 pounds of food distributed to approximately 560 families in a single day? Volunteers from Cottonwood Institute, Re:Vision, We Ride 4, Elsmere Education, and Google have! This holiday season, these outstanding organizations teamed up to create boxes filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, delicious pumpkin pies, cookies, potatoes, bread, eggs, milk, rice, beans, chili, and all the makings for nourishing holiday feasts. Before Thanksgiving, we worked together to unload and organize $40,000 worth of food, compile ingredients, and hand them out to Denver families. We all felt what it means to come together to share resources and energy as a community.
Cottonwood has had the honor of sharing a partnership with We Ride 4 for the past couple years. In addition to building a robust community, We Ride 4 has helped support Cottonwood as a beneficiary. They’ve raised funds that have poured back into our school partners to provide students with opportunities to explore the outdoors and take on action projects to help solve local environmental issues. If that wasn’t already cool enough, we took our collaboration yet another step further this winter by joining forces with two more partners, Re:Vision and Elsmere Education. Re:Vision works with economically marginalized neighborhoods to cultivate thriving, resilient communities. Elsmere partners with colleges and universities to research, develop, launch, and market in-demand graduate programs. Four amazing organizations coming together to spread holiday cheer? Now that’s what we call teamwork!
What a joy it was to see so many community members work together to help one another around Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day. One of the best parts? We got to do it again in December! Just before Christmas, we came together once again with more passion-powered volunteers to continue to cultivate community food systems and build an economy owned by the community. We even had some enthusiastic Google volunteers come out to help! We at Cottonwood are grateful to partner with so many incredible and unique groups, to share relationships and intentional positive impact, and to volunteer our time and efforts within an evolving network. Happy holiday season to you and yours!
Written by CI Program Relationships Manager Teagan Papke
