FRN’s Nonprofit Partner Spotlight: Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission

This Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, FRN is sharing stories from the hunger-fighting nonprofit partners in our network. Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission serves hurting and homeless people in Seattle with recovery services. They provide summer camps for over 650 children throughout our community.

Here are some quotes from their White Center Summer Camp 2015. These are powerful reminders of hunger’s weight on kids, and also of kids’ amazing capacities for compassion.

Dario - Age 7:

“At summer camp, I love to go to recess and play. I play basketball. My favorite food is hamburgers and salad.”

Mickey - Age 8:

“I like the sandwiches here. At summer camp we go on field trips often. They are fun! We go to the zoo, the aquarium and the roller skating rink. I've had to go to school hungry lots of times. When I'm hungry I feel like I'm about to die. I'm starving to death. When my second grade teacher yelled at me I was grumpy and yelled back.

I saw the homeless on the street. I started crying because I didn't want him to die without food. My mom gave him some money.”

Isaiah - Didn't ask age:

“I like that at summer camp they treat everyone with respect and give everyone something to eat. Sometimes I've had to go to school hungry. My favorite food is pizza!”

Aileen - Didn't ask age:

“At summer camp we have fun. I love the sports time and I get exercise. The sandwich I ate a couple of minutes ago was good! My all-time favorite food is mangos and strawberries.

Every single night I stay up to 10 or 11pm. I'm hungry. When I have a small breakfast I get hungry again but I have no courage to tell my dad. Hungry feels like getting sick.”

Mahlet -Age 11:

“In the park she saw a homeless lady. Felt sad for her, it wasn't her fault. Had money and gave it to her. I felt better. I gave her my sandwich and fries.”

Liliana -Age 8:

When camping he went a whole day without eating. “I sometimes go to school without lunch. It made me feel sick. The food here is good! I like the taste. My favorite is the sandwiches. I'm a picky eater. I'll eat the ham and the mustard, then shove it all in my mouth.”

Jaden -Age 10:

“I like the meals here, they have lots of flavor. The best is one roast beef sandwich! My friend Jocelyn sometimes goes to school without lunch. And my friend Abby doesn't have breakfast.”

Thank you to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission for their community service in combating hunger on a daily basis.

Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission works with Food Recovery Network of UW at University of Washington.

FRN’s Nonprofit Partner Spotlight: Home Sweet Home Ministries

It’s Hunger & Homelessness Awareness week, and we’re sharing stories from some of the amazing hunger-fighting nonprofit partners in our network. Nonprofit partners provide invaluable service by nourishing communities across the nation. Check out what’s happening at Home Sweet Home Ministries in Bloomington, Illinois!

Home Sweet Home’s Bread for Life Co-op allows participants to use their own capability and choice to provide food for themselves and their families. Their transition from a food pantry model to a co-op model has empowered and given agency to community members.

Watch the video below to learn more about this creative and successful model!

Home Sweet Home Ministries' Bread for Life Co-op is a membership-based program where individuals can use their own capability to provide food for themselves and their families. The co-op serves low-income individuals and families struggling with chronic food security issues.

Home Sweet Home Ministries works with the Illinois State University FRN chapter.

Amp Your Good and FRN Partner to Fight Hunger

Food Recovery Network is proud to partner with Amp Your Good (Amp) on a nationwide food drive designed to collect fruits and vegetables for hunger-fighting organizations.

Amp Your Good’s crowd-feeding platform enables groups in the United States and Canada to organize food drives designed to generate fresh produce donations — healthy fruits and vegetables. People donate by purchasing fruits and vegetables at Amp’s website. Amp then delivers fresh produce directly to the hunger organization supported by the drive after it’s over.

In this campaign, Food Recovery Network Goes Vegan to Fight Hunger, FRN has partnered with VegFund and A Well-Fed World to collect nutritious food to support Meeting Emergency Needs with Dignity, which operates 18 food pantries in Northern New Jersey. There are 15 FRN chapters participating who have raised 225 pounds during this campaign!

Read the whole press release here.

#GivingTuesday is back!

This year Food Recovery Network turned 5 years old! With each new year has come new chapters, sponsors, partners, and accomplishments. By diverting food away from landfills and to hungry Americans, our network of students and partners has made an impact that reverberates across the United States (44 of which have chapters in our network).

Throughout the month of November, FRN’s national team and chapters nationwide will take part in a cherished November tradition, a tradition where people come together to express gratitude and thanks. No not thanksgiving, the other great November tradition: #GivingTuesday!  

What is #GivingTuesday?

#GivingTuesday is a global day dedicated to giving back. Falling on November 29th this year, #GivingTuesday is a day to celebrate generosity after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The generosity that occurs on this day is driven by the power of social media to unite and connect global networks.

What is FRN doing for #GivingTuesday?

This year’s #GivingTuesday campaign looks different from years before. While in previous years we encouraged every student-led chapter to host a fundraiser, this year we’re focusing on strengthening FRN National’s core resources.

FRN is calling on the network to raise $10,000. Our month-long fundraising campaign will start November 1st and last through the global day of giving, November 29th.

Why should YOU participate?

Our student network is growing at an unbelievable pace. Each year we receive applications from excited students hoping to join, and see our network expand. Since FRN’s founding in 2011, we’ve grown to more than 194 chapters in 44 states and recovered more than 1.5 million pounds of surplus food. That is 1.5 million pounds of food diverted away from landfills and donated to the people who need it most.

The beauty of FRN is the collaboration between diverse stakeholders. By bringing together students, hunger-fighting nonprofit partners, and food donors, FRN facilitates meaningful relationships and impactful work. The money raised through this campaign will strengthen and expand FRN’s capacity and impact even more. It will go towards keeping the national office open, continuing to provide fellowships for recent graduates to support students, organizing the National Food Recovery Dialogues annually, and spreading the word about our incredible movement on an even greater scale.

How can you participate?

Help us reach our goal of $10,000 raised by November 29th! Donate here.

If you would like to give a shout-out to a particular FRN chapter type the school name in the "Dedication" field during checkout. The three chapters with the most shout-outs will win funds toward their recovery materials or attending the National Food Recovery Dialogue in April.

Spread the word! Share this page with your network, and stay engaged with FRN’s Facebook and Twitter throughout the month as we keep our audience updated.

Remember: You don’t have to be a world leader or a billionaire to give back. #GivingTuesday is about ordinary people coming together doing extraordinary things.

Knox Students FRN raises awareness on campus

This feature, "Food Recovery Network raises waste awareness," was written by Elizabeth Clay. The post originally appeared on The Knox Student.

The best way to get students to stop wasting food is to show them exactly how much they are wasting. For the second year in a row, Food Recovery Network, a student organization whose goal is to rescue food waste, held the Weigh the Waste Campaign. This year, there have been several changes and improvements, including taking better stats and having more volunteers participating, to the Weigh the Waste campaign.

“It’s about raising awareness of food waste on campus, specifically post-consumer. So all of the food that we take onto our plates and don’t eat,” said Vice-President sophomore Meryl Davis. “It’s also supposed to show that we can do something about one of the issues on campus. I feel like there are a lot of problems that we feel like we can’t do much about, but this is something that’s in our hands.”

Though the organization is only in its third term at Knox, they have already done much to raise awareness about food waste, both on campus and in the community. Not only do they weigh the food thrown away in the caf during the campaign, they also donate food that would otherwise go to compost.

Though Knox has made strides in sustainability in the past few years, and has a composting machine, it is still best for that food to not be wasted in the first place. It is far more sustainable for those hundreds of pounds of food to help feed the community, rather than be turned into fertilizer.

“Monday through Friday, we rescue food from the CafŽ that hasn’t gone onto the line yet, so food that we haven’t seen, and that’s anywhere between 100-250 pounds of food daily. We pack it up and take it to our partners, which are the Galesburg Rescue Mission, Safe Harbor domestic violence shelter and Moon Tower subsidized housing apartments,” Davis said. The club has been doing this five days a week for three terms now, and has saved over 11,000 pounds of food in the last two terms.

In this year’s on-campus waste campaign, Executive Chef Jason Crouch asked them to record menus and see what is thrown away more often. This may or may not affect what kind of food Bon AppŽtit serves, but it will definitely help them gauge how much they should cook, so less food goes to waste.

This year, they collected over 300 pounds of food waste from students scraping their plates in the CafŽ.

“I think it’s probably about the same as last year, maybe a bit more,” said Davis. “The goal is not to guilt people, but to make them think about the fact that we have this excess of food that can be controlled.”

Last year, four members went to Maryland to the National Food Recovery Dialogue, and came back inspired to implement what they learned. To implement their findings, they had a more detailed record sheet and counted how many pounds were thrown away every half hour. They also made a push to get volunteers from outside the club and asked faculty and staff to help as well.

The only problem with this year’s campaign was the comment board, which eventually had to be taken down. Initially, they had a tally for students to discuss why they threw away their food, with reasons such as “I didn’t like the food,” “I took too much of the food” and “The food was really dry.” Other comments included wanting more halal options, hair being found in the food and that flies were a problem. Along with these comments, there were many inappropriate ones that didn’t even pertain to the food, which caused the board to be taken down.

After only one active year, the news of the program had already spread to many incoming freshmen. There has been much more positivity surrounding the campaign this year, as well as more things than just the weight of the waste being measured. Through their efforts, these students have saved thousands of pounds of food, to be repurposed as compost, or to be distributed in the greater community, and they don’t plan to stop any time soon.

Follow Knox College FRN on facebook.