Former Cowboys center Travis Frederick details his Blocking Out Hunger campaign

The recently retired NFL veteran joined Yahoo Sports Draft Live to explain his work in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to help keep local kids fed during the pandemic. Travis received a grant for his foundation through the NFL's Inspire Change initiative.

Video transcript

[CHEERING]

MICHELLE GINGRAS: The Dallas Cowboys are on the clock at pick 17. Before we talk about the pick though, one of the key losses from last year's team is center Travis Frederick who recently retired. But he's been spending his free time wisely, and that's by blocking out hunger and it's his foundation, which focuses on childhood hunger issues in the Dallas Fort Worth area. He told us this week how he's ramped up his efforts during this obviously very tough time for everyone.

TRAVIS FREDERICK: So I started the Blocking Out Hunger Foundation a couple of years ago. And the idea was to be able to help funnel some of the generosity of the people of the Dallas, Fort Worth area into the great need that there is here that children are hungry. And they're going to school hungry, and they're going to bed hungry. And that's just not acceptable.

So what we've done is we've started to raise funds and put them into programs-- two different programs that we do. One's called Nourish to Flourish where we provide backpack programs for children that lose access to food when they're not in school so that they can make up for the two meals a day that they're losing at school.

And then recently we've also started launching Travis's Pantry. And what that is, is we actually go into schools and put a room in with refrigerator and stock it up with goods and reoccur the stocking on that so that kids can take food home over the weekend. And what we've done since this crisis has hit is kids are no longer in school the way that they normally were. So a lot of kids have lost the ability to receive those meals that they normally would at school. So we've extended our Nourish to Flourish programs, and we continue to be raising funds from people that are willing to give to help feed these children that aren't currently receiving meals.

MICHELLE GINGRAS: Frederick also said that when you can help out as many people as you can in his position, you have a responsibility to do that. Great stuff. If you want to learn more about Travis's foundation, check out travisfrederick.org.