At Your School (AYS) Food Rescue is alive and well at IPS/Butler University Laboratory School 60 and in over 500 schools nationwide.
This program is keeping hundreds of pounds of unwanted, unpeeled, and wrapped food items out of the landfills and into the refrigerators of neighborhood pantries all over Indianapolis.
Jennifer Brilliant, School Food Donation Coordinator, spoke about the food issue as she sees it. “There is not a food supply issue, instead the problem lies in a food distribution issue. We should be feeding families, not the landfills. Milk is the #1 needed item of food insecure families and milk is the #1 thrown away item at schools. All food has value and when food is wasted by being thrown away, that is what leads to hunger,” said Jennifer. She also explained how an apple has power. If an IPS student eats an apple, it is nutritious and gives his/her body power; if the student does not want the apple, then he/she puts it in the collection bin and that gives the power to change someone else’s life.
Each week Mid-North Food Pantry gets approximately 300 pounds of food from our school neighbor and thus our pantry neighbors are getting nutritious and healthy food to take home each visit.
IPS/Butler Laboratory School 60 Assistant Principal, Mrs. Kent (now Principal at IPS/Butler Laboratory School 55) and kitchen staff Seprina Rayford and Sherlene Hurt are instrumental in encouraging the students to use their power by putting their unwanted, unpeeled, and wrapped food into coolers, not into the trash. These bins are collected, weighed, and sorted by Mid-North Food Pantry volunteers each day that the pantry is open.
If you would like to learn more about the AYS food rescue program, visit www.foodrescue.net.
We thank the adults and the students at IPS/Butler Laboratory School 60 who donate hundreds of valuable food items to our pantry each week!