If you plan to give during Give Miami Day, when The Miami Foundation gives the opportunity for matching gifts we hope that the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Foundation is on your list. Here’s why the grandmother in Miami Gardens cares where your donation goes.

It’s because the M-DCPS Foundation established a Marketplace inside Miami Gardens’ Crestview Elementary School, which provides fresh fruits and vegetables, canned goods, clothes, shoes and more to the students, parents and grandparents who live in the surrounding community. More than a food distribution center, the Foundation’s Marketplace is a crucial resource for nutrition, friendships and education.

According to Crestview Elementary School Principal Deborah Johnson-Brinson, the Marketplace is a ‘blessing’, where families and school staff help one another.

“I had a difficult relationship with one grandmother who would pick her granddaughter up from school too early, and the student was missing class,” she said. “Because of the Marketplace, the grandmother began to see the school and me in a different light. She became a Marketplace regular, taking home food to cook, and before long, she began bringing her granddaughter to class on-time. She and I get along fabulously now. She’s invested in the school.”

Stories like that are why we do the work we do. The M-DCPS Marketplaces are made possible by a partnership with Feeding South Florida, but they provide so much more than food. Like the community hubs that they are, our Marketplaces bring people together, where they learn how they can strengthen not only the school, but also everyone who is a part of the school family.

The benefits are boundless, but we only have 14 Marketplaces in place.

With your Give Miami Day gift, we can open more. We can also offer additional internships to high school students, open more STEAM Labs, and give more students Cultural Passport field trips, so they can experience the arts, culture, history and sciences on offer throughout Miami.

You can do all of that and more by simply clicking here(https://www.givemiamiday.org/organization/MDCPSFOUNDATION) and making life easier for Miami’s grandmothers and their grandbabies. I can’t think of a better reason to give.

Thank you, in advance, for making M-DCPS Foundation one of your Give Miami Day beneficiaries. We couldn’t do all that we do without you.