Pensacola has been called the place “where thousands live the way millions wish they could.”

Here’s a bit more evidence of how true that is.

On April 6, 2018, barbecue guru Big Moe Cason made a boatload of pulled pork, brisket and chicken wings at a Pop Up Restaurant outside Perfect Plain Brewery on Garden Street. 

The event was planned by Eggfest to support the early learning initiatives of Studer Community Institute.

Cason, Chris Grove (a grillmaster himself and author of “Nibble Me This” cookbook) and the crew of Pensacola Eggfest served up 500 pounds of protein to hundreds of hungry folks. They gave generously of their time, talents, and treasure. 

“These two men are heroes in our book,” said the Eggfest team on their Facebook page.

We couldn’t agree more. 

During the Sounds for the City concert on the SCI plaza on April 20, 2018, Eggfest announced a donation of $5,000 to SCI — the proceeds of Big Moe’s Pop Up event.

Thanks also to Kevin Greene and the folks at The Butcher Shoppe, who donated the meat that Cason, Grove, Doug Jolly and the Eggfest team worked so hard over. Their generosity helped us maximize the gift that Eggfest gave us. 

Community support for our work is so important. While the Brain Bag project was launched in 2017 with a grant from IMPACT 100, those funds have been spent and we need to keep fundraising to continue the project, which has given at least 5,000 parents a gift bag and an in-hospital lesson on how important it is to talk, read, sing and play with their children in the first three years.

Those first three years are a critical window in healthy early brain development. Children who don’t get the most out of those early years in terms of language exposure, research indicates, are less likely to be ready for kindergarten and may continue to struggle in school throughout their lives.

Data from the Florida Office of Early Learning indicates that as many as one-third of Escambia County children are not ready for kindergarten when they begin school.

Former Pensacola Mayor Vince Whibbs coined that catchy phrase “where thousands live the way millions wish they could.” The rest of it goes like this:  “where the warmth of our community comes not only from God's good sunshine, but from the hearts of the people who live here. Welcome to Pensacola, America's first place city and the place where America began."

We couldn’t say it any better than that.