 Food Rescue would like to introduce our 7th State Director of Student Leadership, Madeline Swain, a 6th grade student from Oxford, Mississippi. Here is Madeline's story in her own words. As the new Food Rescue Director of Student Leadership for Mississippi, I plan to help start up a Food Rescue program in the Lafayette County School District. Our cafeteria is one of many places I see food thrown away all the time. It feels wrong to me, especially when so many kids in Mississippi don’t have enough to eat. Sometimes their families can't afford food from the grocery store. Food that is thrown away could help thousands of people who don't have enough to eat. Saving food also helps the environment because it reduces the methane gases created by food waste in the landfill, and food scraps can be used for composting gardens. Some people think throwing away food isn't a big deal, but I want to prove otherwise. I wrote "Lily's Apple" after watching a video made by another girl my age, Gloria Merrell, who leads a K-12 Food Rescue program in her school in Indiana with the help of Food Rescue. Madeline Swain             Madeline Swain, a 6th grade student at Lafayette Middle School in Oxford, Mississippi, always felt sad watching kids toss unused food into the trash in her school cafeteria. When she was in the 4th grade, Madeline wrote and illustrated a short story about her concern, after discovering Food Rescue's resources online. Titled “Lily’s Apple,” her book tells the story of a girl who suddenly faces food insecurity and helps her teachers start a food rescue program in her school cafeteria. After the story won a first-place award in the 2016 Mississippi Public Broadcasting writing contest, Madeline’s school principal Thomas Tillman tried the food-rescue experiment described in “Lily’s Apple.” He set out a box in the cafeteria for kids to drop off fruits and vegetables. Recently Madeline was named the state student director for Mississippi. She hopes to leverage the book, to help convince school leaders to adopt K-12 Food Rescue policies. She wants to inspire other students to follow her lead all over the country. “Some people think throwing away food isn't a big deal,” Madeline said. “Our cafeteria is one of many places I see food thrown away all the time. It feels wrong to me, especially when so many kids in Mississippi don’t have enough to eat.” People are often shocked to discover that Food Rescue does not have a warehouse of food to manage, or that we do not manage volunteers, or that we are not a food bank of some sort. To some it just doesn't make sense. But we believe nothing makes more sense than "mining" for student leaders via marketing, and then giving them tools to change their world, and asking them one thought provoking question. What is more powerful than the voice of a passionate inspired student leader?             |
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