Meet Food for Schools Sponsor David Smithwick of Southern Village Pharmacy

Southern Village Pharmacy has been open since June 2013 and has been voted as “Best of Chapel Hill” for six consecutive years. They’ve also been a Food for Schools (FFS) sponsor since 2015! 

FFS provides supplemental food to students in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools who are hungry and struggling to concentrate in the classroom. Through FFS, PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro provides each school with $1,000 worth of snacks in a school year – $500 at the beginning of the school year and $500 after the holidays. The snacks – cheese crackers, granola bars, applesauce, apples, protein bars, trail mix, fruit bars, and more – are purchased in bulk, brought to a central location, and sorted. Then, school social workers pick up the healthy snacks on a designated day each semester. To learn more, check out our recent feature on this program. 

David Smithwick, the owner of Southern Village Pharmacy, recently told us: “Supporting PORCH is a perfect fit for us. Helping provide non-perishable foods to fight hunger at the local level is a good thing to do. We focus our philanthropic efforts on initiatives that allow us to directly impact the local area and supporting PORCH at [Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools] is a great example of a great local cause that we are fortunate to be a part of.” 

Smithwick and his staff are known for their outstanding customer service, and they have administered 4,000 Covid vaccines so far during the pandemic. 

“As a local business owner, we greatly appreciate the support we get from our customers,” Smithwick said. “Supporting local initiatives and businesses provide benefits like keeping tax dollars local. We like to support local causes as they allow us to give back to the community, which has supported us and allowed us to become a local pharmacy resource.” 

View our full list of FFS sponsors and learn more about becoming a sponsor.