Jee Foods student leaders Rescuing Food

JEE Foods is Ross High School’s nonprofit. JEE was started from the Samsung Global Classroom STEAM Challenge, where tasked with solving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2: No poverty and Zero Hunger. We took these goals and became a nonprofit organization, dedicated to solving these goals on a local and global scale.
 
JEE Foods is built of the idea of a three prong approach; Jobs, Education, and Economy. JEE offers career opportunities to those in need (Jobs). JEE also broadens our volunteer’s knowledge by providing on the job food training, valuable skills that can be applied to employments elsewhere, and the chance to obtain a food safety certification (Education). With this, our volunteers earn the experience and resources to become financially independent and self sustaining (Economy).
 
JEE Foods also takes a new approach towards ending poverty and hunger. JEE receives food that can no longer be sold at grocery stores, due to expiration date, minor bruising, etc. We also take donations from our various partners, such as Shared Harvest, the USDA, and Kroger. JEE then transports our donations back to our headquarters and begin the reprocessing process. To reprocess our food, we first wash and inspect our food, with the help of our staff and volunteers. We then cut the food into reasonably sized pieces and dehydrate the food using our industrial dehydrator. This prolongs the usability of the food, which is helpful to when we donate the food to the needy. After the food has been dehydrated, we package it sustainably and donate it back into the community using the JEE, I’m Hungry food truck.
 
Throughout JEE’s history, we have donated approximately 1,100 pounds of food back into our community. This has earned us a lot of recognition. JEE Foods has been honored as first place in the SAGE (Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship) Nationals. We also received first in the SAGE World competition in Durban, South Africa for meeting the SDGs we were assuaged to. JEE Foods has also been asked to speak for the United Nations three times. Through our accomplishments, we have been able to partner with more organizations who share the same goals that we do.