Beyond Flexner Virtual Conference Community Project
Corbin's Legacy Donation
The Mission of Corbin’s Legacy is to improve outcomes of underrepresented elementary school children through the elimination of food and medical insecurity. At the Beyond Flexner 2021 Virtual Conference, participants will have the opportunity to donate money that will be used to support Corbin's Legacy in the form of grocery store gift cards to help feed local children. You may donate money now to make this event possible. The fee is $20.
About Corbin's Legacy
Corbin’s Legacy was established in 2015 in honor and memory of Corbin Leafman a Title 1 Kindergarten teacher who died at the age of 30 from cancer. She asked that she be remembered for how she lived, not how she died. Corbin’s claim to fame was, among other things, that she walked through the school lunch line holding up a $20 bill to make sure that the lunch ladies knew that every child was to get a hot lunch – no matter what.
Corbin's Legacy and COVID-19
With the onset and spread of COVID-19, Corbin's Legacy, in an effort to continue serving their targeted underrepresented population (elementary school children and their families) with much needed food and medical care, adjusted delivery strategies. Previous to COVID-19 Corbin's Legacy delivered food to classrooms every week and sent home backpacks of food with children every weekend. In addition, we supplied thousands of backpacks filled with two weeks of food to children and their families for the duration of all school breaks.
Complementing their food distribution, Corbin's Legacy, maintained a free medical screening clinic housed in an Elementary School and partnered with a local Community Health Centers for patients that needed additional care. COVID-19 required them to close the clinic (it was deemed a non-essential service) and stop delivering food (there was none to be found and packing the backpacks could not meet CDC social distancing guidelines. The communities that they serve have and continue to suffer from COVID-19 at an inequitable rate. Thirty percent of the communities that we serve have had COVID-19. More heartbreaking than that, is that 29% have died.
Complementing their food distribution, Corbin's Legacy, maintained a free medical screening clinic housed in an Elementary School and partnered with a local Community Health Centers for patients that needed additional care. COVID-19 required them to close the clinic (it was deemed a non-essential service) and stop delivering food (there was none to be found and packing the backpacks could not meet CDC social distancing guidelines. The communities that they serve have and continue to suffer from COVID-19 at an inequitable rate. Thirty percent of the communities that we serve have had COVID-19. More heartbreaking than that, is that 29% have died.
This is a result of, among other factors, not seeking care soon enough or being turned away due to overcrowding. In response to this growing desperation, (no food, no medical care, loss of income, fear of eviction, mental illness, etc.) Corbin's Legacy now distributes gift food cards to local, accessible, grocery stores. This has been hugely successful. Families can select the food items they want, cook and eat in their own homes. They have also been able to reopen the Simon Clinic and now see children four days a week. Finally, and most humbly, as a result of so many deaths among the parents of the children that they serve, Corbin's Legacy in collaboration with Emerson Elementary School, Maricopa County Department of Public Health and volunteer members of the ATSU faculty, staff and students, have opened a COVID-19 Vaccination POD dedicated to vaccinating the underserved who have been all but forgotten on the lists of vaccine eligible individuals.
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