Tackling hunger and food waste, one step at a time. by Hanna

Tackling hunger and food waste, one step at a time. by Hanna - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

When one thinks of food waste, images of leftover food on your plate that you were too full to eat come to mind, or maybe throwing away a piece of fruit because it has a blemish or a scar. However, the idea of perfectly edible and untouched food being thrown in the trash is not something people may think of. If one was to sit in a school cafeteria, the amount of uneaten food that is wasted is astounding. All of that food has the potential to feed so many people within the community, and possibly the whole nation, if every school found a way to collect that uneaten food.

One night in my sophomore year, I couldn’t go to sleep and I began to list the changes I would like to see around the school. I thought of the unopened milk cartons that were left on the tables after lunch and I wanted to find a way to save them instead of having them thrown away. I began researching information about organizations in Charlotte that recovered uneaten food or organizations that would be willing to pick up any recovered food from schools; much to my surprise, there was no such organization. Finally, I came across the Food Recovery Group’s website which is a group in North Carolina that picks up donated food from restaurants and stores and delivers them to people in need. After getting in touch with the president Mike Cookman, he connected me to another organization called Food Rescue which is based in Indiana and works to educate students and schools about food waste.

I quickly contacted the founder and director of the Food Rescue organization, John Williamson and he immediately set out to help me get the necessary documents and information I needed in order to frame the first Food Rescue program in North Carolina. That night, Food Rescue was born: a program that recovers uneaten, pre-packaged school food items and given to an organization that distributes the recovered food to the community.

Initially, it was very difficult to start the program because there was no foundation to build on. We didn’t have any issues with getting permission from our principal Mr.Parker who was completely supportive, as well as Child Nutrition and North Carolina State Health Department. The difficulty lay with the logistics and preparing important documents that would help frame future programs to come. I had to educate myself on the food safety laws in North Carolina, create a contract from scratch, find organizations willing to take the recovered food, and find a way to get high school students interested and on-board about the program.

Overall, it took me over nine months of research and multiple meetings, but one year later, East Mecklenburg High School became the first school in the Carolinas to have a successful Food Rescue program organized and managed by a student. As of the 2015-2016 school year, East Mecklenburg alone has collected over 4,600 food items which would have otherwise been thrown away. This year we have been able to lead the movement and now other schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) are following. I recently had the honor of becoming the National Student Program Director for the K-12 Food Rescue organization, where I have the opportunity to help students across the country start a Food Rescue program in their schools.

Taking on this project, I didn’t have the objective of changing the world; it was a simple ‘I see a problem, and I’m going to fix it, because if I don’t then who will’? I have been able to teach my peers that they have the power to challenge an issue and change it for the better no matter how old they are. It’s been absolutely humbling to have my friends and people I admire come up to me and tell me about how inspirational my work has been to them. I’ve been able to share with students across the nation that most of the time, you are far from confident: you’ll be intimidated, scared, exhausted and put in situations you are not comfortable in but in the end, you come through it and you’ve made one difference in the world. I’ve learned how to say yes and to take risks and to jump over obstacles. I now know that I can achieve anything I set my mind to and can only hope that in what I have done will lead to nationwide action.