acts of kindness
VOLUNTEER FOOD RUNNER DANIELLE TEPLICA ON A FOOD RUN FROM WESTPORT’S CRAFT BUTCHERY. “I LOVE BEING A RUNNER. EVERY TIME I GET TO DELIVER FOOD, I KNOW EXACTLY HOW I’M HELPING. I LOVE INTERACTING WITH THE PEOPLE ON BOTH ENDS, AND IT MAKES ME HAPPY TO SEE THE GOOD, FRESH FOOD THAT SOMEONE IS GOING TO RECEIVE. COMMUNITY PLATES MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. MY FAVORITE RUNS ARE WHEN MY KIDS COME WITH ME AND HELP CARRY THE FOOD.”
COMMUNITY PLATES IT’S A FOOD RESCUE REVOLUTION by Alison Sherman ACCORDING TO FEEDING AMERICA, the nationwide, nonprofit network of food banks, there are over 50 million food insecure people in this country; one in five are children. In fact, in Fairfield County the number is 103,000 and in Westchester the number is over 90,000. Food insecure means that before the end of the month, these folks will have difficulty feeding themselves and their families; many will have to make choices about paying bills: do I heat or do I eat? The face, or the profile of hunger in this country is not what it used to be and not what one may think. The majority of the food insecure population is the working poor; they make too much money to receive help, and not enough for the basics. But there are more stunning US census statistics: 68% of people eligible for food assistance do not apply for it. Many affluent communities have newly established food pantries, some opening after dark to help residents avoid the scrutiny of neighbors. If you just do the math, statistically speaking, it seems impossible for any one of us not to know someone who is food insecure. I’ve learned a great deal about hunger in the United States in three years with Community Plates, an innovative leader in food rescue committed to ending food insecurity in America. The most important being that food rescue is the answer to the problem. It is the simple solution to ending local hunger. In a country where reportedly up to 40% of our food is thrown away, it seems a straightforward matter of logistics: capture the resource (surplus food) and move it from point A to point B for immediate use. However, the traditional food rescue model has high overhead and fresh food waste caused by additional levels of infrastructure and food handling via fleets of trucks, drivers and warehousing. Community Plates has disrupted this traditional model, in essence 42
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creating a food rescue revolution, by building a technology-based operation that is volunteer-driven and focused on directly transferring food for immediate use. Community Plates is leading the food rescue movement and their volunteers are eliminating hunger by delivering food from businesses that have too much to people who have too little. Almost all food runs are under thirty minutes, allowing more fresh food to re-enter the system and serve a population at risk for poor health. To make sure that all food is used immediately, the donations have already been matched to the appropriate partners and entered into the permanent, master schedule, making certain there is no waste once the donation enters the Community Plates rescue stream. Volunteer food runners report feeling more deeply connected to their communities as they deliver food from local sources to local agencies. Neighbors helping neighbors has created strong bonds between people who may never have met otherwise, but whose paths have crossed on a common mission. Utilizing their cloud-based proprietary app and volunteer model, Community Plates eliminates much of the overhead of the traditional food rescue process, while delivering fresher (and thereby healthier) food directly to those in need. The software, at the forefront of the emerging “social good” technology movement, lets food runners access the organization’s “self-serve volunteer management system” via mobile phone or the Web. With the app, volunteers sign-up for food runs on the spot or in advance, at their own convenience, according to their own schedules. They are able to access important details about the run, and participate in a local and national community of social volunteers. The technology also allows the organization to quantify its impact by mining the data and using the