Announcing Exciting Food Waste Legislation & FRN Lobby Day 2016!

FRN's Executive Director, Regina Northouse, and New Chapter Coordinator, Maddie Cunningham, on the Hill to put plans for FRN Lobby Day 2016 in place.

Today, Representative Chellie Pingree announced an exciting piece of legislation that aims to tackle food waste on a national scale. Pingree’s Food Recovery Act is a comprehensive approach to the complex issues of food waste and recovery; it incentivizes donations of surplus food, clarifies misleading “use by” dates, encourages the sale of imperfect produce, and supports efforts to digest non-edible food scraps into energy. This is the type of concrete action we need to see real gains in the fight against food waste. We currently waste 40% of the food we produce, and we need to be the generation to change this!

Food Recovery Network is proud to support this bill, and extremely excited to announce its first annual Lobby Day taking place on April 4th, 2016, immediately following our National Food Recovery Dialogue. FRN Lobby Day will give motivated student leaders the chance to meet with Senators, Representatives, and legislative staff members to advocate for Pingree’s bill and other legislation related to FRN’s mission.

For more information on the Food Recovery Act, check out Chellie Pingree's discussion of the bill at the New York Times 2015 Food for Tomorrow conference.

Meet HC, FRN Member Support Fellow!

FRN Member Support Fellow hc counts M&Ms to help celebrate reaching one million pounds of food recovered.

Take a second to meet Hannah Cather, one of FRN's 2015 Member Support Fellows. Better known as hc, Hannah hails from Nashville and and can be found on Instagram both in and out of the office. Read below to learn more about hc and the work she does with FRN.

Name/Nickname: hc

Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee

Position at FRN: Member Support Fellow // Coordinator of Project Amplify 

What's one thing you love about FRN? I dig the fact that FRN is a national network -- there are students working towards the same goal all across the country. 

What's a project you're excited to be doing? Ooo, definitely Project Amplify. I'm working on connecting our students with one another on the Internet. Even if you haven't met the FRNd you're Facebook messaging in real life, the fact that you can connect with someone on the other side of the States who knows what you're doing -- what your struggles and triumphs are -- that's just the coolest. 

What do you like to do when you're not helping fight food waste and hunger? I'm probably either reading cookbooks or Instagramming. Photography and food are the best parts of being alive. Oh, speaking of Instagram! Follow FRN @foodrecovery for a glimpse behind the scenes of our national office and the occasional food photo.  

Meet Laura from Drake University!

Laura Leben, President of Drake University's FRN chapter, dresses up as a Compost Sergeant to encourage composting on Drake's campus.

Laura Leben, President of Drake Next Course, saw job posting on campus for a student to start a food recovery program, thought how beautifully the opportunity combined her interests in environmental issues (food waste) with social justice concerns (fighting hunger), and didn't hesitate to apply. One year later, Drake Next Course has recovered over 6,000 pounds of food and raised the second most money for this year's #GivingTuesday #FRNdzy. We're pretty impressed - read more about Laura and Drake University's chapter below.

THE BASICS

Name: Laura Leben

School: Drake University (Des Moines, IA)

Year of Graduation: 2016

Major/area of study: Environmental Science with a minor in Sociology

Position on leadership team: President

WE ASKED LAURA...

Where are you from? St. Charles, IL

How did you get involved in FRN? There was a job posting that Drake’s Community Engagement and Service-Learning Office was offering that was looking for a student to start some sort of food recovery program on campus. I saw how beautifully this opportunity combined my interests in environmental issues (food waste) with social justice concerns (fighting hunger), so I did not hesitate to apply and accept the offer. Sodexo was on board right away.

I built the organization from there, first by partnering with professors and a Freshman Year Seminar course, partnering with the Drake Environmental Action League (a student organization), then creating a club of volunteers devoted to food recovery, called Next Course, and then finally partnering with the national Food Recovery Network for even more support.

Can you share a favorite FRN memory? A few months ago, Next Course hosted Ben Simon, one of the original FRN founders and former executive director, to come to Drake and give a talk about his experiences working with these issues. It was great to gather so many people together to talk about the realities of food waste and gave us a lot of momentum and inspiration to keep going. (Thanks, Ben!)

What's one thing you love about Drake University? Drake is a great space where anything is possible. It was easy to start a new organization and rally support from other students around the issues. There are a lot of great, positive people here and I really enjoy doing what I do as a result.

What are your ambitions post-graduation? I am graduating in May, so I am currently looking for jobs in the field of environmental science, specifically in restoration ecology and conservation of native species and native land.

What other organizations are you involved in? I am also a member of the Drake Environmental Action League (DEAL) where we work hard to promote sustainability on campus with various initiatives. This year, DEAL is working to plant native species around campus to create habitat for native pollinators, increase recycling awareness, build up and strengthen our composting programs on campus, divest from fossil fuels, look into installing solar panels and install electric and heat metering on the buildings on campus.

Interested in learning more about Drake University's chapter? Check them out here and on Facebook and Twitter.

Watch: Food Recovery Network talks hunger on 11 TV Hill

FRN Member Support Fellow talks with 11 TV Hill host Jason Newton about FRN's work in the Baltimore community.

This past November, Food Recovery Network was given the opportunity to share their Baltimore-area efforts on WBAL-TV's 11 TV Hill. FRN's Hannah Gingerich sat down with host Jason Newton to talk about the active FRN chapters in the area -- University of Maryland Baltimore County, Goucher College, and Towson University -- and about the role of FRN in the Baltimore community.

As Newton and the show's guests discussed, ending hunger and homelessness are priorities in the Baltimore community. Hannah shared how the Baltimore-area FRN chapters have worked creatively to contribute to the solutions to these issues. Since their founding, UMBC, Goucher College, and Towson University's chapters have donated over 4,000 pounds to local non-profits within the city, including Project PLASE and Helping Up Mission. 

Hannah highlighted a second way the FRN has helped fight hunger and homelessness in the Baltimore community, speaking to our role in growing local leaders. When asked about the experience of working with FRN chapter leaders, she explained  "It's a really positive feeling...we get to hear from those college students who had just started thinking about those issues...after a three or six month time working with FRN, they suddenly had become leaders on these issues in their community. I think that is what's really important, because a lot of them graduate and take this experience and turn it into a career. It's really helping to bridge the gap between these colleges and universities and the communities that host them, which is often something that is really needed."

To hear more about FRN's work in the Baltimore area, watch Hannah's full interview here.

Fighting Hunger and Homelessness in West Virginia

Each year, the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness co-sponsor National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. Throughout the week, individuals and communities across the country work to bring greater awareness to the issues of hunger and homelessness. This year, our FRNds at West Virginia University went above and beyond to cultivate this awareness in their community, hosting a week of events on WVU's campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. 

FRN at West Virginia University began the week by hosting a presentation with local middle school students. They partnered with the STEMists team at Suncrest Middle School in Morgantown; as part of the First Lego League Challenge, the middle schoolers were tasked with combining their focus on Lego robotics with sustainability. They chose to focus on food, creating a plan to build a garden and compost system at their school. The students also offered to help FRN at West Virginia University recover more food by providing them transportation. With a great turnout from the students, parents, and officials from Suncrest, Monday's event was an all-around success!

Middle schoolers in Morgantown, West Virginia, give a presentation on waste as part of FRN at West Virginia University's National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week event series.

They continued the week by hosting a panel event on Tuesday. Titled "Hunger: The Cost in Your Community", the panel included Zacary Tardiff, the director of Empty Bowls Monongalia County, an organization that operates fundraisers to provide grants to local food assistance programs; Alison Peck of WVU College of Law, a specialist in food and agricultural law; Kandi Shafer, the regional director of Catholic Charities WV; John Sonneday, the director of the Coordinating Council on Homelessness; and Melissa Hernandez, a representative from FRN at West Virginia University.

FRN at West Virginia University hosted the panel discussion "Hunger: The Cost in Your Community", bringing together multiple voices in their community to help raise awareness on the issues of hunger and homelessness.

Wednesday brought food safety to the forefront, as the chapter members participated in Monongalia County's official food safety training. FRN at West Virginia University followed the training on Thursday with a screening of Just Eat It, a documentary on food waste and food rescue. 

Hilary Kinney, one of the leaders of FRN at West Virginia University, reflected on the week of events stating, "All in all, I think it was a successful week...I think the best event of the week was the panel. It brought together individuals from very different backgrounds who are all interested in ending hunger and/or homelessness in our area. "

Hilary, one of the leaders of WVU's chapter, with Monday's panel speakers (from left: Hilary Kinney, Melissa Hernandez, Zacary Tardiff, John Sonneday, and Kandi Shafer.

A huge congratulations to FRN at West Virginia University for what was most definitely a successful week! To read more about their efforts surrounding National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, check out this article. To find out more about FRN at West Virginia University's work, check out their chapter page and follow them on Facebook.

National Hunger & Homesslessness Awareness Week took place this year on November 14-22. To learn more and find out how you can be a part of next year's events, click here.