Food Recovery Network Featured at Montclair State University

Ava Scott, a Junior at Montclair State University, recently featured the Montclair State Food Recovery Network chapter in an article and invited FRN Executive Director to join Montclair State’s Morning Buzz program on WMSC. Read the full article on Medium and below. And listen to the interview.

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Every day at Montclair State University, leftover food is thrown away at the dining facilities, often overlooked as waste. For students like Myriame Kaba, accessing affordable and nutritious meals has been a challenge. Thanks to the Food Recovery Network, Kaba now has access to fresh meals. Each week, student volunteers collect excess food from campus dining facilities, transforming it into ready-to-go microwavable meals, supporting students facing food insecurity.

The Food Recovery Network, established in 2017, was created to address two important challenges on campus: food insecurity and food waste. What began as an initiative to recover unused campus food has become a larger effort that reduces waste while supporting students facing food insecurity.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took over, the organization stopped all activities, temporarily ending its initiatives. Despite these challenges, the Food Recovery Network remained committed to restoring its operations. By working to become a member of the Student Government Association (SGA) and forming partnerships with on-campus food vendors, the network successfully relaunched its food recoveries this year.

With a desire to expand the organization’s impact on the campus community, Nikki Cocuzza, president of The Food Recovery Network, found a way to change the initiative to meet students’ needs.

“I was able to revamp [the organization] into something that I envisioned. Originally before instead of microwavable meals, [the volunteers] would just get the trays and bring [them] to, like, an off-campus food pantry. While I love the idea, I’d love to bring that back in, I wanted to revamp it into the individual meals because I just felt that was more suitable to the campus,” expressed Cocuzza.

Each week, dedicated student volunteers work to achieve the organization’s mission by leading food recoveries. Volunteers collect unused food at campus dining facilities that would otherwise go to waste, all while ensuring proper safety measures are in place.

“We provide all the supplies, the containers, the spoons, gloves, sanitizer, everything,” stated Cocuzza.

Volunteers follow a step-by-step process, passing containers of food and filling each with a meat or a side. After preparing the meals, they label them with allergy information to make sure students receive the correct meals and consume them safely. The meals are then delivered to the Red Hawk Pantry, where the Food Recovery Network partners to provide a designated space for students to pick them up.

Katie Griggs, a graduate student worker at the Red Hawk Pantry, felt this partnership was not only expanding the pantry’s efforts but also making a positive impact on the community.

“[These meals] gives students the opportunity to again have a pre-made meal, which they might not be able to have every day or at all,” stated Griggs. “So they’re able to, you know, come and take a meal every single week.”

The availability of a fresh, pre-made meal has become a valuable resource for students like Myriame Kaba. As an out-of-state student, Kaba faced significant challenges during her first two years at Montclair State, managing without a car to buy groceries and with no nearby family for support.

“I was really struggling to ask people around to bring me food,” expressed Kaba. “My mother was trying to find friends in New Jersey for me who [could] bring me food. I would have to take Ubers and everything.”

For many students, accessing consistent, nutritious meals is a daily challenge. A survey conducted at Montclair State between 2018 and 2022 revealed that 41.4% of students were food insecure. A recent United States Government Accountability Office study found nearly a quarter of college students struggle with food security, with some experiencing significant difficulties.

Dr. Lauren Dinour, a professor of nutrition and director of the Didactic Program, explained how food insecurity affects every aspect of student life.

“When we’re hungry, that’s all we can really think about, and so it becomes difficult to focus on the lecture or to focus on the paper that we have to write, or to study for an exam. But food insecurity can also affect mental health. It can affect physical health. It can affect sleep,” explained Dinour.

The Food Recovery Network’s initiatives are just one small step towards addressing food insecurity. While this issue cannot be resolved alone, it plays an important role in eliminating the concerns of where students will get their next meal.

“If you ran out of swipes and all of that and you haven’t been able to, like, you couldn’t get food on campus with your swipes or flex. They got the same thing [at the pantry] with the Food Recovery Network,” shared Kaba.

For Cocuzza, these efforts go beyond recovering food; it’s about helping a community of students overcome significant challenges and achieve success during their college experience.

“I may not be food insecure, but everyone around me may be suffering silently. And I recognize that the silence of suffering and the embarrassment factor that people worry about,” expressed Coccuza.

In addition to helping students, the organization works to minimize food waste on campus. Over the past seven years, it has recovered more than 10,000 pounds of food.

Since the start of the school year, the Food Recovery Network has partnered with NextGeneration Service Corps and expanded recovery services to add an extra day, providing more meals to students than ever before.

Through initiatives like these, students have access to a valuable resource during times of need, ensuring they have access to nutritious meals when they need it most.

“We can’t shy away from it. It’s a fact, [and] it’s a reality,” expressed Dinour. “So if we want students to be successful, in which of course we do in their academic endeavors, then we have to address some of these factors that are affecting them.”

Ava Scott is a junior at Montclair State University studying Journalism and Digital Media Studies and Business. Scott is an on-air personality and producer for Montclair Newslab and 90.3 WMSC Upper Montclair. She aspires to work for E! News as an entertainment reporter.

Announcing Board Leadership Transition

As Food Recovery Network (FRN) has evolved, we have deepened our understanding of our values, how we define them, and the impact we strive to achieve. We prioritize being a student-centered movement, embrace inclusion, and actively listen to incorporate diverse voices into how we do our work, our partnerships, and our commitments. We've witnessed the transformative effect our initiatives have on student leaders year after year—into their lives after graduation. And we’ve recognized and taken action on opportunities for FRN to create a more systemic impact on our society.

With these insights, we introduced FRN10X in 2020—a strategic framework designed to expand FRN’s impact over the next decade. For the past 3 years, these initiatives and this growth have been initiated with Tina Gooch, Vice President in Legal for ATT, as our Board President. During her tenure, we’ve expanded our budget to pilot new initiatives, including partnering with elementary schools to distribute surplus produce and expanding our community reach by strategically expanding our chapter presence in Community Colleges.  

It is with deep gratitude that we acknowledge Tina’s exceptional leadership as she steps down from her board service with Food Recovery Network. In that same spirit, we are committed to building on the increased impact she has helped establish.

We are pleased to announce our Board of Directors has unanimously voted to appoint Dr. Jessica Lautz as our next Board President. As a proven strategic leader with a strong commitment to our mission and values, the Board is confident that her leadership will continue to guide us through this next phase of exponential growth. Dr. Lautz's dedication to fostering an inclusive environment will enhance collaboration among board members and strengthen our connections with the broader community. As Dr. Lautz assumes the Presidency, we believe her strategic vision and commitment to our organization’s financial sustainability will ensure our continued success and stability in the years ahead.

Along with a transition in board leadership, FRN is pleased to welcome two additional new voices to our Board: Russ Taylor from SecureCPG and Christian Stanley from Greenspring Advisors. The entire Board is dedicated to securing the financial and partnership support necessary to achieve the strategic growth outlined in FRN10x.

"Over the past nine years as Executive Director, I have witnessed our board take on increased responsibilities to build our organizational sustainability and base of support. During this same time period, FRN has greatly expanded its reach and impact. We are grateful to Tina Gooch for shepherding this growth at the board table. At this current stage of our programming, supported by our deepening board involvement, I am confident  Dr. Jessica Lautz, who has been a longtime supporter of FRN even before joining the Board, will transition us into the future and help ensure FRN continues to feed more people faster in ways that our communities want. At Food Recovery Network, we believe no one should be hungry. The act of food recovery honors the hard work of food growers and producers, initiates a more equitable food system, and has a measurable impact on the future of climate change.”  Regina Harmon

For media inquiries or more information regarding board transitions or Food Recovery Network Impact please contact Sarah Corbin, Director of Communications.

Transformation—The Societal Impact When Building Long-Term Partnerships Between Corporations And Nonprofits

For the past year and a half Gaylord National Resort in Washington DC has supported a food recovery effort as part of hosting their large events. They’ve made room in their kitchens for extra refrigeration and space to store extra food packaging. The Gaylord staff take time after each event to carefully and safely package surplus food to store for our Food Recovery Network team to pick up and deliver to area hunger-fighting partners. The process has changed their workflow from managing food waste to food recovery to benefit their neighborhood.

The consistency of the program has made a significant impact on the community. Gaylord has been able to redirect the equivalent of over 60,000 meals to seven area nonprofits on the front lines of helping to provide food for individuals experiencing hunger. Those nonprofits are involved in helping individuals improve their lives by providing a safe place to sleep, finding permanent housing opportunities, employment, family support, and more. It’s been food the organizations can count on regularly—adjusting budgets to use finances on other needed items and staffing. This means more food is on hand in their freezer when demand is high. All of the resources required to produce those meals have also been saved—including the water used to grow and prepare the food, as well as the labor, fuel, and time required for its cultivation, transportation, and cooking. Instead of the food being tragically wasted in a landfill—where it would generate excess CO2 and directly contribute to climate change—this food was put to good use; it was eaten. From a sustainability perspective, Gaylord National has mitigated nearly 50 tons of CO2e emissions—the equivalent of driving 11 passenger vehicles for a year with no destination and no purpose.

CORPORATE COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Corporate support of employee community involvement, such as volunteering, or programs like Gaylord National’s, has long been an effective way for companies to engage their staff in meaningful activities that benefit the communities where they operate. Corporations let us know that they want to do more than just donate financially; they want to be involved. Often - those community-based opportunities take the form of a single day of volunteering for their staff. Days like Martin Luther King Jr Day, Thanksgiving, and the winter holidays are all popular volunteer times for everyone. These can vary in size and must be scheduled within specific timeframes. While these events provide valuable opportunities, they also come with significant costs for the nonprofit involved. They can create a vacuum of volunteering during the spring and summer when the need for support is still high. Unless a nonprofit is financially stable or compensated by the corporation, hosting such events can be overwhelming, requiring considerable time and resources, all while hoping that the return on investment justifies the effort.

Large-scale, one-time volunteer engagements can provide some benefits. Food Recovery Network hosts several events each year, resulting in large volumes of food being recovered. Getting to the level of organizational ease to run these events took a tremendous amount of funding and time over several years. However, more can be done. Corporations can benefit from the knowledge that a consistent presence and regular involvement are much more beneficial to non-profits of all sizes. I’d even extend this sentiment a bit further—the reason the nonprofits work hard to make that one-day volunteering event work is because of the relationship they are building and, in my experience, the hope of what the conversion into a long-term partnership can accomplish.

Building a relationship - committing to weekly support, partnering to use corporate resources to solve systemic issues - a nonprofit can use those hours and funds strategically to help create long-term change, which leads to transformation.

FOOD RECOVERY - A TRANSFORMATIONAL WAY TO DEEPEN COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Food recovery is not the norm in the United States; in fact, food waste is alarmingly common. In 2022 alone, 38% of the total food supply went uneaten or unsold, amounting to 235 million tons of food that could have been redistributed to the 44 million people experiencing hunger and food insecurity in the country. Food is also the number one item found in landfills across the United States. So how can we make food recovery of surplus food the norm instead of the exception?

One key step is to expand how corporations structure their community involvement. Corporate cafeterias nationwide could implement recovery programs similar to successful models already in place. Just one day of food recovery can translate into more food for people experiencing hunger in the same communities and regions where those companies have a presence while preventing precious resources from ending up in landfills. Nonprofit organizations that receive this food could consistently depend on a higher volume of food donations.

People frequently approach my organization, expressing interest in helping with food recovery. However, when they learn that moving thousands of pounds of food typically requires only 1 to 3 people and takes about one hour, they often decline, citing availability issues since recoveries are usually scheduled during the day. Our existing food recovery model thrives precisely because college students and the FRN national staff can participate during “odd” hours, sometimes with little notice.

For example, if corporations created a lunch volunteer program, one or two staff members could recover surplus food, deliver it to a nearby nonprofit, and return to work quickly. The staff would feel amazing for helping out, the DINING staff would feel amazing for not having to toss out their hard-earned work of making the food, the local community benefits, and if they wanted to, the corporation could also receive tax benefits from doing their good deed.

Additionally, our organization has established three free fresh produce markets in the United States. If nearby corporations could store our materials (such as tables, banners, baskets, and gloves - they really do not take up that much space) at their offices and help us set up the market, they could create a consistent free produce market by working in shifts of 3-10 people for two hours. Even just the storage of items would alleviate the expense of precious funds to pay for storage - it would alleviate FRN staff time and create more efficiency.

In both scenarios, it’s essential to recognize that the amount of food redistributed is not in the millions of pounds at once. (Luckily, so many incredible organizations focus on doing just that.) Instead, food in these scenarios is distributed in quantities that meet the immediate needs of localized areas experiencing hunger. This means working with organizations such as homeless shelters, Title I schools, domestic violence houses or churches. For example, these locations might need 10 trays of prepared food rather than 10,000 or 5 pallets of apples and tomatoes instead of 500. The goal is to open up more avenues for food access until all surplus food is consistently routed into our communities in ways that make food access easier for them.

If a smaller percentage of employees have direct involvement in this type of community activation, companies can educate their teams about their food recovery efforts and help employees understand the need to end food waste in general. We offer lunch and learn opportunities for any company that wants to learn more about food recovery and how people can get involved in the movement.

Many companies have already participated in Day of Service opportunities to honor Dr. King, and I encourage them to continue doing so. Large-scale volunteerism does have a place, and it is necessary. However, I encourage more companies to take the time to find consistent commitments to their communities.

This is what leads to transformation: small acts consistently performed over time. And that is the kind of systemic change that honors Dr. King’s legacy, in addition to upholding jobs that have dignity and fair wages—the leveraging of resources, consistently with trust that the support will be there, corporations, nonprofits, and communities can work together toward eradicating hunger altogether.

Imagining An Ideal Town: A Vision for Food Access and Community Connection

When I worked for the national leadership development nonprofit Coro Center for Civic Leadership, we used to conduct an annual activity where prospective Coro Fellows visualized an “ideal town.” I invite all of you to do that now, and specifically to imagine food access and the ideal ways people could access food in your ideal town that thrives in your mind. Take a moment to let your imagination wander. Wandering in our minds, imagining without structure or format, wandering with inclusion and love, can offer us opportunities to let go of stress, to seep in our power, into our knowledge that we may not often have an opportunity to do. For many of us, this imagination wandering can be an exciting way to break open a conversation with others during this subsumptive time called “the holiday season.” Expressing our ideal town and access to food in that ideal town can be a way to welcome in stories from the past, including our own, and provide pathways for exploration in ways that support us leaning toward one another.

For me, summoning up images of food access in my ideal town, specifically during Thanksgiving provides me with opportunity; the opportunity to bring what I know of Indigenous communities into my mind and to feel, maybe, how some in the diverse Indigenous community feel about this specific holiday in the past, and how they feel about it today. I can hold their varied perspectives and share some of what I’ve learned over the years from being a friendly person alongside, not necessarily within the community, by reading books, participating in workshops, and watching videos. I can share what I know with others around me and hold space for whether this is new information, uncomfortable information, or information to which they can contribute further perspectives.

I can take moments to understand what food access has meant and continues to mean to those multiple and diverse communities here in the United States whose ancestors inhabited this exact land long before my people arrived. What did they like the most about their food production that can be pulled into my ideal town, and in my actual town? What was the hardest? Who were the innovators of food production and how was that innovation received? I go in and out of applying knowledge to construct my ideal town, and actually wondering about our shared history here in the U.S., and about our present moment together.

I think about the act of drying out my bell peppers or my tomatoes as an act of seed saving, a practice across many cultures around the world. I imagine places of trade where items are exchanged based upon an agreed value of those items and think fondly of a barter session I helped host in Washington DC over a decade ago. I traded my kefir water grains for a pair of earrings made from old bicycle tires that I still have to this day. In my ideal town, what would I be able to produce to trade and barter for that consistently provided my family with items we needed and wanted? Would there be a space for bartering in my ideal town? How far away would people come, or would I have to leave my town to acquire the foods I could use? Would it be easy for people to come into my town, or easy for me to leave? I remember reading The Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, that many of the roads in the U.S. follow the same routes of the trade routes of Indigenous people well before railroads and highways were created, and I think…the genius of creating those specific routes lives on today.

What does your ideal town look like and access to food in your ideal town? What does the ideal town look like for those with whom you're spending Thanksgiving? What in your ideal town reflects the place in which you live now, or places where you have lived? If you feel comfortable, please share with us, we’d love to hear.

Indigenous Heritage Month: Immersing in Knowledge, Understanding Our Food System History, and Creating Change

(There are suggested texts and links to resources throughout this article to encourage a deeper and continuous understanding of our history at your own pace.)

I recently had the opportunity to hear chef, activist, and author Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, speak at the National Museum of American History. When he said growing up, 75% of the adults in his community were unemployed I was so angered. I was embarrassed. For a moment, I had a feeling of being trapped. I had to take deep breaths.

Knowing that his ancestors had lived such a rich and full existence on this land that was taken and reshaped beyond their control and hearing this statistic for his community made my eyes bulge. I audibly made noises of discomfort, not because of the horrific statistic itself, but from knowing that statistic, from my vantage point, had been normalized — just the way things are, unavoidable, unchangeable, and certainly unchallengeable.

This isn’t a statistic we should settle into. How the United States is designed today affects all of us, even if we are personally doing “okay.” Chef Sherman is using his experience, knowledge, and talents to welcome us into a story from a vantage point unknown to many of us. He is inviting us into his experience through the healing properties of food. He didn’t have to share his stories, his words, his recipes to all of us, but in doing so he has offered us an opportunity.

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At Food Recovery Network, we understand food intersects almost all aspects of society. Despite having a deep tradition of cultivating and sharing food that nourishes people and culture, systemic inequalities like racism and formal and informal policies that discriminate, extract, and cause harm continue to create barriers to food security for people of color, especially individuals who live on tribal lands.

Historic oppression of U.S. tribal communities has led to staggering injustices when it comes to hunger. Another statistic that evokes the same emotions I felt when hearing Chef Sherman speak — 1 in 4 Native Americans face food insecurity — double what white people experience in the U.S.

Learning more about historic inequities, and the history of our land is important to finding a way to heal our future and heal our food system. We cannot, and should not, untangle the history of this land and the history of our food system in the U.S. from our Indigenous community, family, and people.

Our history includes the attempted genocide of our Indigenous communities for land and wealth acquisition and a food and agricultural system built from the forced Black labor to work the land through enslavement, enriching those who engaged in this “national sin” and “who profited by this theft every hour that they lived.”

Our history includes Jim Crow laws developed to maintain the racial hierarchy of white men at the very top, thereby producing the refined blueprint of continued systematic denial of access to purchase land or pass land onto families for Black people, for people from Asia, the Pacific Islands and the Pacific Southwest. For our Indigenous community, during the same time period of Jim Crow laws, formal and informal policies produced a bleak outcome for Native communities who continued to see a loss of land and culture.

For those of us interested in our collective history, there is much to learn and much to do. To begin to understand or deepen our understanding means interacting with a full story that includes all of our histories and experiences of our ancestors, whoever they may have been.

For all of us in the United States, we must not ignore, paper over, romanticize or even deny: our history includes the systematic killing of indigenous peoples, the burning of their crops and trade posts, the killing of their domesticated animals, their forced assimilation, broken treaties by the government of the newly established United States of America, broken business deals by individuals set on acquiring land by any means necessary, forced removal from their land, privatization of their lands, and forced removal of their children (part of the assimilation) from their families to destroy the fabric of the next generation.

How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies. ― Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Author

For all of us, our history is our present, and that means understanding some of the very, very devastating decisions Indigenous ancestors and their children had to make to survive. Their decisions of peace, or battle, of daring and resistance, the incredible perseverance to continue passing their knowledge, culture, and sometimes even their collective trauma to this very day — so much of that richness of experience can be explored with respectful curiosity over the course of our lives if we want.

And for me, I have chosen to learn as much as I can as often as I can. In doing so, I’m acknowledging our history and our present and using that knowledge to look for ways to move forward.

Every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people is to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others so that the lives they are leading make sense. — Vine Deloria Jr., Author of God is Red.

Learning about Indigenous groups by interacting with resources created BY Indigenous groups is an onramp to expanding what we know of our history, present moment, and future — what we know of ourselves, too. Embracing their wisdom can lead to positive shifts in our collective relationship with the natural world and to one another and can foster holistic change. We can, as Matt Birkhold of the Visionary Organizing Lab encourages, “culturally transform ourselves into people who believe our lives are worth saving, and each other’s lives are worth saving.”

Many Native and Tribal communities and people like Chef Sean Sherman are currently working tirelessly to reclaim their food sovereignty and ensure access to plentiful healthy foods for themselves, for us, and for future generations. By listening to these groups, reading their words, accepting their invitations for visits, and supporting them materially by purchasing their wares and food, we all have an opportunity to weave into our lived experience threads of care, peace, and a present and future lived together.

Talking about the formation of the United States, our history, can be hard, awkward, scary, and troubling. But it can be energizing, uplifting, informative, deeply joyous, and connecting to know our ancestors lived here and shaped the places we now inhabit. I believe it is important for all of us who want to support a food system that nourishes us all to remain firm in our resolve to continue to learn. We should invite others to connect to the work in ways that make sense for them. We can invite one another, as we are learning as we are engaged in work, to rest, to let ourselves rest, and to continue onward, always together. Always together.

As you move forward in your journey of learning and taking action, I invite you to keep in mind the words of Audre Lorde, with a quick note that the use of the word enemy may be counterintuitive to our fight. The full sentiment offers so much to those of us seeking to change the food system for the better and therefore the quote is left intact. Lorde gave this speech in 1982, reflecting on the 1960’s:

Through examining the combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. — Audre Lorde

These are a few of the suggested texts and links to resources throughout this article to encourage a deeper and continuous understanding of our history at your own pace.

1. Deloria Jr., Vine, “God is Red”

2. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” and other various works

3. Lorde, Audre, various works

4. Page, Cara and Woodland, Erica, “Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety”

5. Patel, Raj, “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice”

6. Patel, Raj, “Stuffed and Starved”

7. “Doctrine of Discovery” American Indian Law Alliance: LINK

8. “Vatican repudiates Doctrine of Discovery which was used to justify colonialism” NPR Religion, Bill chappell: LINK

9. “Indigenous Education: Safeguarding Our Knowledge for Future Generations” Cultural Survival: Youtube LINK

Food Recovery Network recognizes that food security, economic security, and climate justice are inextricably tied to racial equity, and achieving ground across any of these areas is dependent on addressing the root causes of these inequities. FRN is committed to racial equity and inclusion through all aspects of our organizational development and programming.

As an organization we acknowledge that the land our headquarters office resides is land inhabited by the Kinwaw Paskestikweya Clan, English translation is the Piscataway Conoy Clan.

We will always acknowledge the Kinwaw Paskestikweya Clan who were the traditional inhabitants of these lands and water well before we were here and continue to live here. To learn more about the tribal lands on which our chapters reside, please see https://native-land.ca.