Nourish the world
How Freshii’s partnership with WE provides healthy meals in Kenya and Ecuador
Six years ago, Matthew Corrin boarded a plane from Toronto to Vancouver. As the morning flight took off, he looked over to find his seatmate eating a salad for breakfast, something he thought only he did.
The Founder and CEO of Freshii—a company out to revolutionize the way we eat fast food by way of nutritious meal options—remembers this as his serendipitous first encounter with the CoFounder of WE, Craig Kielburger.
Their conversation, a catalyst for a partnership between the two organizations, showed Corrin that WE’s international development work aligned perfectly with the Freshii mantra: Nourish Yourself, Nourish the World. Today, in their pursuit to provide healthy meals to community members in Kenya and Ecuador, Freshii has enabled over 3.5 million meals through the WE Villages Food Program.
For Corrin, giving back is an integral arm of his business.
“A company can check a number of boxes,” Corrin believes. “It can help you reach your financial goals, your philanthropic goals, your personal beliefs, your health goals. What we’ve really tried to do at Freshii is create a company that satisfies all of those desires.”
It’s the reason Freshii engages employees in monthlong fitness challenges, wellness weeks and most recently, sends staff on ME to WE Trips to visit the communities where Freshii’s investment is creating sustainable change.
In 2016, Freshii inaugurated “WE menu items.” By donating 10 cents of each WE menu item sold to the WE Villages Food Program— supporting communities in accessing, growing and maintaining sustainable and nutritious food—Freshii makes a consistent, daily contribution to WE.
The company coins this as their “always on” approach.
To amplify their impact, Freshii created Communitii Day in 2018, donating one dollar from all menu item sales to the WE Food Program. In 2019, this funding was put toward WE Well-being, a new program designed to support youth mental health and wellness. Next year, they have hopes of extending this day to last a week, maybe more.
“We always want to strive for more,” says Corrin of Freshii’s contribution to charity. “Like all other areas of our business, we feel like we have so much more work to do.”
For Corrin, sharing his passion for social responsibility with the Freshii family is something he has practiced since the beginning. Offering ME to WE Trips to see the WE Villages communities supported by the partnership is the next step.
Angela Agro is one of five employees who has taken the trip so far. This past July she travelled to Ecuador, where she visited the school kitchens and vegetable gardens that Freshii helped build through their WE partnership. Agro also witnessed the power of WE’s holistic five pillar approach.
“Knowing that these children, who are learning how to grow healthy food, wash it and prepare it, and how to live a healthy life are going to bring this back to their (families)…” Agro pauses. “It is actually fundamentally changing the fabric of this community in a long-term sustainable development way.”
Her experience continues to fuel her enthusiasm for Freshii’s partnership with WE.
“We’re just really proud to be affiliated with such an incredible organization such as WE,” she concludes. “We look forward to continuing to evolve this partnership as the years go by.”