Boca Helping Hands’ Bowling for Bread 

ByHeather Redlich

Benefited Backpacks Weekend Meal Program 

Boca Helping Hands welcomed 225 adults and children at their annual Bowling for Bread event on August 25 at Bowlero in Boca Raton. BHH invited kids from local children’s charities to attend for free and enjoy an afternoon of bowling, food, and prize giveaways. 

The children’s charities that were invited to attend this event included 4KIDS of South Florida, Inc., Achievement Centers for Children & Families, Adopt a Family of the Palm Beaches, Inc., American Association of Caregiving Youth, Fuller Center, HomeSafe, Place of Hope/Village of Hope, PROPEL, and Pearl City Cats. The event also raised enough funds to provide more than 41,000 meals for the BHH weekend meal program. 

Special guests from the Florida Atlantic University football team included Offensive Linemen Federico Maranges and Andre Lamas and Junior Punter Logan Lupo came out to cheer on the kids and bowl alongside them.

Trophies were awarded to the top three bowling teams and overall high scores. Bowling tournament winners were:

1st place team – Waypoint Residential

2nd place team – Waypoint Residential

3rd place team – The Law Offices of Pamela Higer-Polani, Attorney at Law

The top score was 180, bowled by Dan Brede.  

Boca Helping Hands has operated the BHH Backpacks children’s meal program for the past 13 years. Every Friday, BHH Backpacks provides food-insecure students with non-perishable, easy-to-prepare meals to ensure they get enough to eat on the weekends. During the 2023-24 school year, BHH Backpacks helped over 1,600 students in 13 local schools, providing 181,362 meals and 60,454 snacks to elementary students in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Boynton Beach. 

Bowling for Bread is part of Boca Chamber Festival Days—a series of fun-filled August events intended to raise awareness and funds by pairing nonprofits with for-profit members of the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce. Florida Peninsula Insurance Company was Bowling for Bread’s For-Profit Chamber Partner and the Event Sponsor was the Lee Pearlson Steinberg Foundation. Other major sponsors included the Gary Peters Family Foundation, Humana, Stanley Waldshan, and Waypoint Residential. 

This was the seventh year that the Lee Pearlson Steinberg Foundation sponsored the event. “Bowling for Bread is always a fantastic event, and I love seeing the kids enjoy themselves. I’m thrilled to be a part of it again this year,” said Foundation Trustee Lee Steinberg. “Supporting this cause is a special way for me to honor my mom, Pearl, who had a deep passion for helping children.”