Joe Burrow hasn’t played for the LSU Tigers since his magical 2019 season, but his impact is still being felt within the community. On Monday, kids at Claiborne Elementary in Baton Rouge received free produce thanks to The Burrow Foundation.
According to The Advocate, large portions of the school were transformed into a farmer’s market. Kids then got to go down the aisles and fill up grocery bags with whatever fruits or vegetables caught their eye.
The program is called “Power of Produce,” and it’s an initiative put together by The Burrow Foundation to help educate kids about healthy eating. While Claiborne Elementary was the first school to reap the rewards of Burrow’s charity, the foundation hopes to reach 10 schools over the next year.
Burrow wasn’t able to make it back to Baton Rouge to see the “Power of Produce” in action, but his parents were there wearing his LSU jersey.
“We love Baton Rouge and Louisiana and LSU,” Jim Burrow told The Advocate. “So it all makes sense to give back.”
The “Power of Produce” is part of a vision that was conceived the night Burrow won the Heisman in 2019. In his acceptance speech, Burrow got emotional when discussing his hometown of Athens, Ohio, an impoverished part of the state where too many children deal with food insecurity. The Cincinnati Bengals drafted Burrow first the first overall pick the following spring, and he launched his foundation in October 2022.
“It’s a very, very impoverished area,” Burrow said of Athens, which is about 150 miles east of Cincinnati. “The poverty rate is almost two times the national average. There are so many people there that don’t have a lot, and I’m up here for all those kids in Athens and Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school. You guys can be up here, too.”