How It Works

We would collaborate with grocery stores such as Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s has a Neighborhood Shares program where they donate all excess products to hunger relief organizations. Their employees sort through all excess food and recover anything that is edible but wouldn’t be bought by a regular customer (ex. a blemished apple) and donate it to charitable organizations. We would first form an understanding with grocery stores before we give them a login to access our site and post products on there.

In order for our idea to function we need volunteers to take care of the distribution process to students. First, we would ask school-affiliated volunteers. This would be best because they would already have been background checked by the school. Second, we will recruit volunteers through platforms such as NextDoor. Also, we would offer it as a service opportunity to high schoolers or local religious organizations (ex. churches). These volunteers would have to clear a background check from the school district at which they plan to volunteer. We will have 2 types of volunteers. One set of people to transport the food from grocery stores to schools and another group to work onsite at schools and oversee the distribution process.

We would first start our collaboration with schools that have a high percentage of free and reduced price lunch recipients so that we can maximize the effect of our program. This will ensure that the students that need it the most will get the benefit from our program. To take a look at the statistics of which schools in our county have the most free and reduced price lunch students, click on this link. We have already spoken to multiple social workers at schools in our county. We specifically contacted schools with greater than 70% of students in the free and reduced lunch program. Generally, many of these social workers expressed interest in the program and thought it would be beneficial to the school community. You can view the specific emails on our mission folder website.