Close to 3000 people came to the Greenbridge Plaza in White Center on August 5 to enjoy a free barbecue meal courtesy of the Vertically Integrated Partnership to Feed Those in Need (VIP) working as part of Governor Gregoire’s Feeding Washington Program.

VIP is a coalition of farmers, food processors, food distributors and other food service companies that are working together to help stop hunger in the Pacific Northwest. The VIP includes Sodexo, Annie's Fun, Hirai Farms, Sysco, Food Services of America, McCain Foods, National Frozen Foods, Farmer Bean Company, Darigold, Franz Bakery, and UW Housing & Food Services, etc.

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Kerwin Higashi, Blaine Hiari partners in VIP explained how VIP got started."Kerwin and I met about three years ago," said Hiari, " I'm the farmer from eastern Washington, Kerwin does food and facilities management. In three years I think we've given away about five million meals so we've been having a lot of fun doing this. It's our hobby." Higashi continued, "Part of it started because I'm with Sodexo, the leading food and facilities management corporation in America, but people don't know about it. It's a solutions company that does food and facilities management. As part of Sodexo we have a Stop Hunger Foundation so our thing is to really stop childhood hunger in the United States. Blaine and I got together and he was talking about his crop and how he had some excess, and said 'Hey, we can put something together. We've got a lot of managers in the northwest who can pack all the excess that you grow.' so that's how it started."

From there they grew the organization by bringing in other partners such as distributors and others.

Hiari said, "In my view what's really great are all the volunteers. You've got people here from the University of Washington that are actually taking vacation time to be here. There's no way we could do this without professional assistance. It's terrific. We really enjoy this."

Rick Jump, of the White Center Food Bank helped coordinate the distribution of 4000 tickets through the King County Housing Authority, Southwest Boys and Girls Clubs and the food bank." We're very grateful to the Vertically Integrated Partnership and Blaine Hirai in particular for making this event happen for our community. It's such a blessing."

Washington State Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna stopped by the event to learn more about what the various groups are doing regarding hunger in the area.

The menu included fresh barbecue chicken, corn on the cob (grown by Hiari), potato salad, rolls, ice cream bars.

Together with the White Center Food Bank, they worked to provide this festive meal for those in need in the Greenbridge community . Music was provided by local jazz musician Frank Steele.

Balloon artist Ben Trevett "Barry the Balloon Guy" was busy entertaining the children in the crowd.