Martina McBride’s global charity initiative, Team Music Is Love (TMIL), hosted a wildly successful event at The Fairgrounds Nashville on Friday, June 7th to benefit the local community. This event included a food drive, book giveaway and storytelling, a diaper giveaway, and an essential item giveaway, which included items such as tooth brushes and toothpaste.
The Nashville Fairground neighborhood was selected as the location for this event due to its status as a food desert in Nashville – most people who live there lack easy access to affordable fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, as the closest grocery store is a two mile walk away.
To help, TMIL, in partnership with One Gen Away, brought in a truckload of over 20,000 pounds of locally sourced fresh produce and locally saved canned goods during the food drive, providing approximately 10,000 meals which will feed 380 families. This incredible feat will surely impact the local Nashville community given that 1 in 6 adults and 1 in 5 children in metro Nashville are food insecure – meaning they lack reliable access to nutritious food and may survive from fast food and convenience stores.
TMIL also partnered with The Word Wagon to give summer reading books to kids – two low income Nashville metro schools will receive free books – and partnered with the Nashville Diaper Bank to give diapers to families in need.
Of course, this event wouldn’t have been a success without the help of volunteers. People from 20 different states and 3 different countries showed up to help give away flowers, balloons, lemonade, and fill grocery carts with fresh foods and canned good staples.
