Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- An Indiana school district recently partnered with a nonprofit to send some students home with a set of frozen meals on weekends.
- In the U.S., about 12 percent of households with children will experience food insecurity at some point during the year.
- The U. S. wastes a massive amount of food. Programs like this might be a first step in cutting back on waste.
A school district in Indiana devised an innovative way to make sure its students don’t go hungry: Give them frozen meals that consist of unused and leftover food from local catering companies and other food businesses.
Elkhart Schools and a nonprofit called Cultivate recently began handing out meals through a pilot program. Students generally eat breakfast and lunch at school, but some don’t always have access to meals over the weekend. Each Friday for the rest of the school year, the program will send 20 students home with a backpack containing eight frozen meals, reports Indiana’s WBST.
“Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system,” said Jim Conklin of Cultivate. “We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it.”
The school district itself will provide some of the food.
“At Elkhart Community Schools, we were wasting a lot of food,” said…
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