S.A.H.A.R.A will be one of our great Aid Station stops for Zona

We’re going to have a great time at El Tour de Zona for three days. The rides will be long – and sometimes tiring – but no doubt it will be fun. And we’ll have great aid stations for all our riders.

One will be hosted by S.A.H.A.R.A, where they will provide water and fruit for the cyclists.

What they don’t give away will go back to their nonprofit, which helps the locals down there. They are looking forward to being part of the event. It comes four months after participating in El Tour.

“It’s been a pretty good year for us, so far,” said Rick Hackney, the CEO of the Southern Arizona Humanitarian Aid Resource Alliance (SAHARA) out of Huachuca City in Cochise County.

SAHARA has acquired a new building and it’s full and they’ve partnered with the Arizona Food Bank Network so they’ll start to get commodities.

“Because of that we’ll be able to accommodate more people,” he said. “Instead of buying all the food (they need) for our thrift store they’ll bring us enough food we’ll need for one of our handouts once a month and then the other one will come out of our pockets, so that will cut our expenses in half.”

They’ll be there Friday and Saturday at Zona’s first Aid Station.

S.A.H.A.R.A was founded  Hackney & Jredia Newton, residents in the Cochise county community since the early 1980s. They have the heart and passion to serve their community & members and have been seen doing the same across many other cities and states during desperate times of need.

They are a food pantry and thrift store.

“The things we sell in the thrift story helps put food in the pantry,” Hackney said in a previous interview. “We’re feeding about 100 families twice a month.”

They’ve been doing this for eight years.

“Our mission is to get people what they need,” he said.

Good people, indeed.

The purposes for which this nonprofit is organized are:

Distributing humanitarian aid & supplies to individuals in need at no charge – from first responders & firefighters to the citizens within the community that find themselves in a position of needing a hand.

They often help those whose houses have burned down, “donating furniture and whatever they need,” Hackney said.

They also work with the Warrior Healing Center, an organization that has 52 veteran organizations.

“Anytime they put a veteran in a house, we stock the house with food and clothing or whatever they need,” he said.

They also ally with other humanitarian agencies to do the best job we can to help ALL those in need.

It is through YOUR donations that make it possible to complete the mission each time the call comes in, or there is a knock on the door.