K-12 Food Rescue Podcast Featuring Windermere Elementary Students in Ohio

Hear the inspiring story of how three high school students at Solon High School founded Project Leftovers, an organization committed to preserving unopened and unpeeled food from the trays of students that was previously unnecessarily being thrown away.

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.  

​Hello! My name is Lea Kim and I am a senior from Solon High School in Ohio. Day by day, the cycle was the same: the bell rang and with it, mountains of food were thrown into the piling pits of garbage. Growing up conditioned with the mindsets of conservation and gratitude towards my meals, the thirty minutes of lunch always remained a daily horror story. However, the true horror lay in the discovery that my school was not at all special; rather, it was only a single puzzle piece that factored in the big picture of food waste in America.
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Nevertheless, small changes should never be doubted. Thus began the story of my fight against
food waste. In June of 2017, I took the exciting first step, leading a group of my friends who all
shared the same yearning for a solution. Under the name of “Project Leftovers,” we armed
ourselves with a summer break’s work of research and ran to the battlefield.
The 2017-18 school year was a busy one for Project Leftovers. With approval, we conducted
monthly waste audits in the cafeteria. We contacted local food businesses, the school nutrition
department, and cafeteria staff to suggest prevention methods. In order to pique student interest
in the issue, we held a food-waste-themed art contest to promote student involvement.
Now starts chapter two of our journey: food recovery. Thanks to a kickstart provided by the K12
Food Rescue program and its Executive Director John Williamson, Project Leftovers was able to
obtain the crucial resources in planning a recovery program. After thorough research through the
website’s documents, litigation, and procedures, we were able to hold a meeting with our
school’s principal and nutritionist to suggest the idea.

The takeaway from that meeting? Small, but strong steps will be taken towards that direction.
Currently, we plan to pilot an internal food recycling program for this school year. Pre-packaged
items and whole fruits will be collected and will be available for students in our school who
cannot afford a lunch. School hasn’t even started yet but the future for Project Leftovers seems bright already.

To all of the future food waste fighters out there, feel free to contact Project Leftovers for more information about our journey as well as how to start yours!
[email protected]