As the newest member of the Food Rescue team, John asked me to take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Carmack-Brilliant and I will be serving as the Lead Program Director. In my former life I was a broadcast journalist for nearly two decades. My job took me to several states before coming home to Indiana in 2002 where I worked at WRTV-6 for eight years. Most recently, I worked as a general assignment reporter for WTHR.
During my time as a journalist, I worked hard to make a difference. Nothing was better than the honor of telling the stories of raw human kindness--people helping people for no other reason than to do the right thing. I saw the best and I saw the worst of our world. One thing that always struck my heart was the heartache brought on by hunger and poverty and the real tragedy is so much of it is preventable. One in six Americans struggle to put food on the table. That's 12.5 million families meaning an estimated 15.9 million children go to bed hungry every night. Yet, we are throwing away 40% of our food supply? This just does not make sense and should not be acceptable to anyone, period. A hungry child cannot concentrate at school. A hungry child cannot develop properly. No child should be concerned about where their next meal will come from. Providing food at school is wonderful, but when we then toss an estimated 22 million healthy, unopened and perfectly good food items from student trays in Indiana schools alone, alarms should be going off in everyone's heads. This is food that could be and is feeding families beyond the school walls. This is why I am thrilled to be on the Food Rescue team. Not only will I help establish additional Food Rescue programs in schools, I will work directly with students to run the programs on their own. Just think of the life lessons kids will take away from being able to help feed those in need instead of a landfill which will ultimately harm our environment. This kind of empowerment is invaluable because it says, "Hey! You can in fact change the world!" Who doesn't benefit from that? I am first and foremost a storyteller and with Food Rescue there are no shortage of good ones out there. Each month I will post a spotlight story on different schools, students and caring volunteers doing great things in the Food Rescue arena. If you know of great things going on, please let me know! I would love to share your story to help others get on board. Don't stop there though. There is so much more you can do! Check out the links below to find out how you can keep the Food Rescue revolution going. Have questions? No Problem! Send us an email and we will help you every step of the way. Let's put a stop to food waste and get food to those who need it most. Together we really can turn the tables on hunger. Now let's get started! All my best, Jennifer [email protected] Links: http://www.foodrescue.net/donate.html http://www.foodrescue.net/k12-getting-started.html http://www.foodrescue.net/food-rescue-shareable.html |
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