Helping Hands Ending Hunger Sophie Harward: K-12 Food Rescue National Student Leader: Georgia6/24/2019  My name is Sophie Harward, and I am the student founder of Helping Hands Ending Hunger. The idea for the program started 3 years ago when my Mom told me that a couple of kids in my elementary school had come to school on Monday without eating any food over the weekend after their parents had been seen digging through the dumpster after a Friday night football game. Because she was a parent volunteer at my school, teachers asked her to help put together a food basket for these children. It dawned on me that there was a lot of uneaten food in the school cafeteria during each breakfast and lunch. My idea was that food could be used to feed this family and any others that needed food to eat over the weekends and school breaks. However, I also had heard teachers complain that they had try to collect uneaten food from the school cafeteria to send home with needy students and had been told by officials they couldn’t do it. My Mom is a retired lawyer, and I knew she could help convince officials that throwing perfectly good food away was not better than feeding children who needed food. After a lot of time and effort talking with numerous officials in the state of Georgia, Helping Hands was given the green light to proceed. We started with a pilot at my school in my hometown of Trion, Georgia and now are operating in schools around the state. Our mission is to empower students to repurpose unopened food from school cafeterias and join hands with their communities to feed hungry families. While we focus our efforts on schools in Georgia now, we hope to expand our program to schools nationwide in the near future. In doing so, we hope to be a leader in the effort to alleviate childhood food insecurity, reduce food waste, promote education equity and ultimately shape a better world.   2015/2016 School Year Lauren Clay and Briggs Griffin were the first K-12 Food Rescue Leaders at West ClayElementary 2015 Article In Camel Current By Mark Ambrogi West Clay Elementary School students are doing their share to help feed those less fortunate. Under the guidance of cafeteria manager Beth Galloway, the students are donating their food to the Merciful HELP Center at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. West Clay Elementary second-graders Briggs Griffin, 8, and Lauren Clay, 7, will represent West Clay at the Eco Science Fair at Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis on March 20-21 to showcase the project. Nicki Griffin, Briggs’ mother, transports the food from the school and takes it to the Merciful HELP Center at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Lauren’s mother Kate Lopez is part of the Carmel Clay Schools Green program. “Where my mom brings it, anyone who is hungry can come in and get some food,” Briggs said. “It doesn’t cost any money.” Briggs said all the kids at his school like to help out. Lauren said most students are remembering to recycle. “It’s going great because a lot of people say ‘I haven’t opened this, I can give it to Food Rescue,’” Lauren said. “So they don’t waste it.” West Clay principal Jennifer Szuhaj said her Carmel school got involved with the Food Rescue program because she said they were seeing such a large amount of food being thrown away. Food Rescue matches up those willing to donate their unused food with a local food pantry. “We want our students to eat their food, but sometimes they are just full or decide they don’t want certain foods,” Szuhaj said. “Instead of just throwing their food away, the students put certain foods on a special cart and now those foods go to someone in need instead of the trash. The staff and the students are very excited about the program and feel good inside knowing they are helping to feed people who are hungry.” Griffin unloads the food and weighs it, then puts the milk and perishables in the refrigerator. “There are usually lot of unopened cartons of milk, cheese sticks, raisins, things that kids have to take,” Griffin said. Griffin, an OLMC parishioner, volunteered with OLMC asked the congregation for a volunteer who could drive the food from the school to the Merciful HELP Center. “Feed people not landfills is what they are going for,” Lopez said. 2016/2017 School Year: 1st Year Tracking Tool Existed  2017/2018 School Year  Lauren and Briggs recruited Noah Borcherding to lead K-12 Food Rescue at West Clay in the 2017/2018 school year.  2018/2019 School Year  TOTAL FOOD ITEMS DONATED IN 3 YEARS 2016-2019  It is often said, "actions speak louder than words." Today we want to celebrate the actions of an incredible K-12 Food Rescue partner who is retiring as the director of nutrition of Anderson Community Schools in Indiana.
In 2015, Donna Curtis established a K-12 Food Rescue program in several schools in Anderson, IN. The results of her efforts can be seen on K-12 Food Rescue's Impact Dashboard image below sponsored by the Kroger Zero Hunger Zero Waste Foundation. If she had not taken action in 2015, over 265,000 food items would have been fed to landfills rather than families in need in her community. In Robert Frost's famous poem, The Road Not Taken, the final stanza reads, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. In 2015, most thought school share tables and/or food donations/rescues were not allowed in our national school lunch program. However, Donna examined the new guidelines and facts regarding the law and the Richard Russel National School Lunch Act found on our website, and she chose the road less traveled by developing a K-12 Food Rescue program in Anderson. The "difference" Donna made by choosing the road less traveled is far greater than the hunger relief and environmental impact provided by the rescued 265,000 food items, as many saw her impact and were inspired to follow her lead. Thanks Donna for leaving an incredible legacy of leadership and impact for others to follow. If you are a food service director, cafeteria manager, student, parent, teacher, school board member, or school administrator, Ihope you are inspired by Donna's story and will join her as a leader in the #FoodIsNotTrash movement. Send us an email at [email protected] , and we will help you get started on the road to rescuing food in your school! John Williamson Food Rescue Executive Director [email protected] |
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