Langston Moore, Mississippi Regional Director, and Leigh Ann Blalock, Mississippi Program Coordinator, of the Society of St. Andrew (SoSA), spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club’s August 3 meeting. Per its website, the Society of St. Andrew brings people together to harvest and share healthy food, reduce food waste, and build caring communities by offering nourishment to hungry neighbors. The organization in effect gleans surplus foods and provides them to organizations that feed the hungry. Typically, the food is gleaned from farmers and food producers and distributed to food pantries.

SoSA was founded in 1979 by two Methodist Ministers and their families in Big Island, Virginia. It is organized into 8 regions, primarily in the Southeast United States. Its success speaks for itself. In 2021, through June, 

• SoSA has gleaned, gathered, and distributed 33,133,079 pounds of fresh produce in 2,552 events, with 7,488 volunteers.

• Food donated by 473 farmers has been distributed to hungry people through 1,156 feeding agencies.

The food that SoSA gleans is perfectly good to eat, but it is either excess or does not meet some quality standards. Typically, the standards not met are the size of the produce. SoSA uses volunteers to glean the food and frequently to deliver it to a food pantry. In response to a question, the speakers said that although the Stewpot Community Services Food Pantry doesn’t provide fresh produce to its clients, Stewpot uses produce gleaned by SoSA to prepare its daily meals for the hungry.

SoSA uses volunteers in many roles including gleaners, drivers, writers, teachers, speakers, fundraisers, and others. It is primarily a volunteer-driven organization with a very small professional staff. The Mississippi office consists of two people and it operates statewide.

We thank Moore and Blalock for their presentation and for what they do to feed hungry Mississippians. They are shown in the following photo with ClubPresident Uriel Pineda (right).

Their presentation and the remainder of the meeting may be seen at the following link: https://vimeo.com/583530035.

Tony Jeff, President & CEO, Innovate Mississippi, spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club’s July 27 meeting. Jeff described the situation in Mississippi where it lags all other states in businesses in the Fortune 500. Mississippi has only one, Sanderson Farms (#662), whereas Arkansas who was dead last in 1960 now has 6 firms in the Fortune 500: Walmart (#1), Tyson Foods (#80), Murphy USA (#279), J. B. Hunt (#395), Dillards (#439), and Windstream (#474). 

The salient question Jeff asked is “Why can’t Mississippi companies be the biggest in their fields? He showed the slide.

He responded “We can!”.  And we must “think bigger and identify bottlenecks,” Then he asked the question to the meeting attendees “What is stopping you from being the biggest in the world?”

Jeff then said “for every winner, there are dozens of losers.” He cited several technology laws, in particular Grove’s Law, “Only the Paranoid Survive!” This law was formulated by Andy Grove, the founder of Intel.

With respect to being a Shark Tank, Jeff said that in the past 36 months, 43 Mississippi companies have raised $17.7.M

The events that Innovate MS sponsors are listed on this slide:

Innovate MS considers itself a Co-Builder with entrepreneurial organizations; i.e., it is offering special events in the latter part of 2021 and in 2022.

It will be expanding its angel funds in 2022 & 2023 to include the South Mississippi area and Oxford and the delta in the next two years.

Innovate MS offers connections to capital

Innovate MS’s commercialization model is a three-phase one with technical, marketing, and business components based on the models taught in engineering and business schools.

Jeff closed by reminding the club member of Innovate Mississippi's success stories:

And reminding us of what they do and have done

And that Innovate Mississippi is Mississippi’s “Shark Tank.”

We thank Jeff for his presentation and for what Innovate MS is doing for our state. He is shown during his presentation in the following photo.

Mark Anderson, 2021-22 Governor of Rotary District 6820 spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club’s July 13 meeting. This was his first visit to the club since becoming Governor on July 1. He was accompanied by his wife Shahla.

Governor Mark introduced the new district website Rotary6820.com and discussed the plans for the district in his term.The details of those plans are included on the website. He showed a presentation that included those details.

Following his presentation, Gov. Mark introduced Thomas Dent of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services who introduced the principal activity of the meeting, the filling of backpacks for foster children on their first night in Foster Care. Thomas is a former club member and is the son of North Jackson Rotarian Tommy Dent. Club members brought pre-pared backpacks and filled others in the meeting.

The following photo is of Mr. Dent, Club President Uriel Pineda, and Governor Mark.

The following photo is of the club members with Gov. Mark.  holding their filled backpacks. 

Club Member Neelam Goel is shown below filling her backpack.

Club members Neelam Goel, Rita Sun, Collier Graham, Cooper Morrison, Uriel Pineda, and Lori Greer working on backpacks.

Club members Larry Anderson, Tom Parry, Ben Walton, and Kevin Russell filling their backpacks.

This was a very well-received activity by the club and will be very helpful to the children entering foster care.

Gov. Mark’s presentation and the entire meeting may be seen at the following link: https://vimeo.com/574984995.