Community Foundation celebrates $25,000 commitment

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Community Foundation celebrates $25,000 commitment

Details: Published on Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Photo by Kate Jackman-Atkinson. Beautiful Plains Community Foundation chair Jane Goudie (right) accepted a $25,000 donation from LiberTerre. Trevor Lizotte, Vice President - International and Domestic Sales at HyLife Foods, presented the donation on behalf of LiberTerre and Retail Ready Foods.

Submitted Article

Beautiful Plains Community Foundation

Thanks to a generous donation from LiberTerre, the Beautiful Plains Community Foundation is one step closer to meeting the Thomas Sill Challenge. LiberTerre has committed to donate $5,000 per year over a five year period, for a total donation of $25,000 by 2019. The Thomas Sill Foundation has challenged Manitoba community foundations by committing to match half of all donations received by foundations until Sept. 24, 2016.

“We are honoured to become a Patron of the Foundation,” said John Ferraro, CEO of Retail Ready Foods Inc., the parent company. LiberTerre is a family of premium proteins, sourced from Canadian farmers. Their mission is to provide customers with the superior taste of meat that has been traditionally raised, fed a healthy diet and treated well.

The community of Neepawa is very important to LiberTerre as HyLife Foods, their key strategic partner, has operated in this area since 1986. For years, HyLife Foods has been an important part of the Neepawa community and a prominent supporter of the BPCF. HyLife Foods is a premier producer of fresh pork raised without the use of antibiotics and beta agonists (also known as hormones), which is sold under the LiberTerre brand.

“In Roman mythology, ‘Liber’ is often described as the protector of agriculture and fertility, and ‘Terre’ translates to earth in French,” explains Ferraro. He added that LiberTerre strongly believes it is their duty to look after the earth in order to effectively sustain life for future generations. However, it is more than the earth that supports life; it’s the people who produce the food and the communities in which they live that collectively form a food ecosystem that must be sustained.

“Communities like Neepawa are an important part of our food ecosystem that must thrive in the future. It is for this reason that we have decided to support the Beautiful Plains Community Foundation,” said Ferraro.

The Beautiful Plains Community Foundation oversees a $3.2 million endowment, which is used to support not-for-profit organizations in the towns of Neepawa and Brookdale and the municipalities of Glenella-Lansdowne, Rosedale and the Langford portion of North Cypress-Langford. To date, BPCF has distributed over $1.7 million in grants to different community organizations and in 2016, over $86,079 in grants were distributed.