The Blocking Hunger Foundation recently hosted its second annual Tee Off Fore Hunger fundraiser at Top Golf in The Colony.
The April 18 event sought to raise funds to help pay for new programs such as Travis’ Pantry and Nourish2Flourish.
A non-profit organization, the Blocking Hunger Foundation seeks to provide healthy and nutritional food for hungry children in Dallas.
Former Dallas Cowboys player Travis Frederick founded BHF in 2017 after seeing children in line waiting for food while he was volunteering at another organization.
The foundation is now headed by current Dallas Cowboys center Tyler Biadasz, who has been running it for the past two years.
Frederick spoke to The Dallas Express and reporters at the event and expressed concern for children who are either not eating enough or not eating healthy food.
“Unfortunately, in society today, it’s a lot easier to go and get something that’s unhealthy, and it’s probably less expensive to do that than to go get a whole piece of fruit or fresh vegetables that’s going to help fuel your body a little bit more,” said Frederick speaking to The Dallas Express and other reporters.
Both Frederick and Biadasz came from small towns in Wisconsin and later relocated to Dallas.
Biadasz told The Dallas Express that the difference between the population of hungry people in Amherst, where he grew up, and a big city like Dallas is very apparent.
“Honestly, when I was at a young age in Wisconsin in a small town, you don’t really see a lot of it, but then when you get to the bigger cities, that was one of the first things I talked to Travis about,” said Biadasz, speaking to The Dallas Express.
“But then you see it, and when you see it it’s very vivid in your mind, you want change, you want to see progress to that and help educate like Travis said and have that self-education where they can keep learning about how to refuel,” Biadasz explained.
Frederick said that when he was growing up in Sharon, Wisconsin, there were still people who went hungry, but parents would do their best to shelter their children from seeing those harsh realities.
“It’s not that you don’t see it at home. We’re from a small town that when you’re a kid, you know we as adults do our best to hide those things. We try to make it so that everybody can be the same, and so I didn’t know how bad it was at home. And it wasn’t until I was down here and saw it and it came to light that I saw how bad it was at home too, and it’s all around us, and I think that’s the most important thing,” he said.
“Hunger is everywhere and it’s not just big cities, not just small towns, it’s everywhere. It’s a problem in this nation, and it’s something that we can work together to help solve. And that’s part of what we do here is we try to bring some awareness,” Frederick added.
“We try to put programs in place that are reaching children that weren’t being served before, we’re trying to help people, and hopefully, as kids are growing, they’ll continue to do that as well.”
The Tee Off Fore Hunger event raised funds for programs like Travis’ Pantry, which allows children to go to a fully stocked pantry in their school and fill bags with food to take home.
The idea is that children can stock up on food so they can have a meal before the next school day or over the weekend.
The event also helped raise funds for Nourish2Flourish, which helps provide children with snacks and meals over extended breaks from school like spring break or summer vacation.
For more information about ways to help or volunteer, visit Blockinghunger.org.
