“New Orleans based Giving Hope is a nonprofit organization that mirrors the passions of founders Troy and Tracy Duhon,” said Ben Comer, Executive Director of the Giving Hope Foundation. The idea for Giving Hope was birthed after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Duhons and Comer worked together in their church outreach to set up afeeding center for New Orleans residents at Duhons’ Premier Honda dealership. The Duhons saw how important food distribution was to the homeless and needy, so they were moved to acquire and operate a food pantry funded in part through donations, a program of giving $25 from the sale of each new and used car from the Duhons’ dealerships, and contributions from the Extra Credit Donation Program as well as from other companies and individual donors.

Comer said, “From that beginning, Giving Hope has expanded into two hot meals kitchens and a grocery and food stuffs distribution warehouse. Amazingly, Giving Hope recently was given a community center in the 9th Ward of New Orleans to serve families and children in that area of the city.”

The impact of Giving Hope is extensive. Each day, from Monday through Friday, Giving Hope prepares 1,100 hot meals and delivers almost 950 of those hot meals to nine senior citizen centers and homes in New Orleans that do not have hot meal services. Further, in an average month, Giving Hope would provide groceries and foodstuffs to 3,300 families, but has helped more than 25,937 families in the three months since the COVID-19 restrictions began in March, 2020.

“Monthly contributions from Extra Credit are significant and used wherever needed,” says Comer. “In this time when many fund raising activities have had to be canceled, ongoing, monthly contributions from Extra Credit and other organizations and donors have been vital to the food distribution function.”

While providing food distribution in New Orleans is an important passion of the Duhons, after adopting a child from China, they saw the desperate need for orphanages to care for an ever-increasing number of orphans. “As a result,”, Comer explains, “their second passion is to build an orphanage on every continent in the world. Giving Hope plans to open its latest international orphanage in the Dominican Republic later this year.”

Giving Hope is so involved in Helping Other People Every day, it incorporated “HOPE” into its name. Extra Credit is honored to provide monthly financial contributions to this wonderful  nonprofit organization.