FARMINGTON—Many families will be gathering to enjoy a meal for Thanksgiving but there are some Davis County students and families who won’t because of food insecurity. To help those in need, Davis Education Foundation partnered with Mercedes-Benz of Farmington and Utah Jazz player Sviatoslav “Svi” Mykhailiuk to provide 300 hams for distribution across the Davis School District. 

The hams were delivered to Farmington and Davis High School Teen Centers on Tuesday, Nov. 25.

“Svi came to us, we have a relationship with him, and he said ‘hey, I want to do something for the community,’” said John Henson, general manager, Mercedes of Farmington. “We care about communities. We have a relationship with Farmington High School and said ‘hey can we reach out to Davis County and see if there’s something we can do?’”

Henson contacted the Foundation and they were ecstatic, he said.”Svi and I talked about it and said we could get 300 hams. The Foundation said ‘absolutely we’ll take it when we find some freezers and fridges. They called me back and said they were good to go. So we picked up 300 hams.”

This season is tough and hard for people, said Henson. “We wanted to do something to make sure the families have things, especially with a lot of military families around here with the airbase.”

“With Thanksgiving coming and me being from Ukraine as well, we know the world we live in and so I’m trying to just give to the community as best I can and help everybody,” said Mykhailiuk. “It feels great that you’re helping somebody and just seeing everybody happy and making their day better. At the end of the day we’ve all got to be human and help each other.”

Cameras were flashing when Mykhailiuk showed up at the school and helped the SBOs unload the hams. “I’m not doing this for the cameras or anything,” he said. “Even if there were no cameras here it would be even better but I’m just trying to help everybody. I’ve been in Utah for two years. I've embraced the city and the organization and I feel like it’s just great to give back to people.”

Every high school in Davis County has a teen center. The centers provide students with food, showers, washers and dryers, a safe place to be and resources they need to help them be successful in school.

“We were approached by Mercedes and John said he was partnering with Svi for the Utah Jazz and he just wanted to do some good in the community,” said Kara Toone, executive director of Davis Education Foundation. “They originally had talked about donating turkeys but some of our families who are experiencing food insecurity don’t have microwaves or hot plates, things like that. So we kind of redirected and said ‘hey, how about a holiday ham, something that can just be reheated?’”

As everybody is aware there was a 45 day government shutdown, she said. “We have a lot of military students here in Davis County because the Air Force Base is the largest employer. A lot of students’ families were going without pay for a period of time and we did see an uptick in our pantry pack distribution. So the need is definitely there.”

Another gauge with a need in the community is people reaching out for holiday help with Christmas gifts and things like that, said Toone. “That’s something we’ve seen larger numbers of this year than in years past as well.”

Toone said that if people want to help either with food insecurity or with gift cards, different things like that, Davis Education Foundation supports those efforts and facilitates those donations. “You can contribute gift cards or food cards for students who are going to be on break and don't have school breakfast and lunch during the time that they’re away from school. They depend on those meals.”

To donate visit educationfoundation.org.