Fountain Valley School food rescue program serves community while preventing food waste
For the past few years, students and faculty members at Fountain Valley School have been involved in a weekly effort to reduce the school’s environmental footprint, help serve the surrounding community, and combat food waste.
The Food Rescue Program, which repurposes unused food and delivers it to a nearby food bank each Thursday, was the brainchild of former student Sage Keller as part of a 2020 senior project. Keller now studies English and philosophy at Pitzer College in California, but her legacy lives on in the rescue program, which provides 15-to-20 pounds of food each week to the Connections 4 Life food pantry in Fountain.
“It’s so great to hear that people are still participating in the Food Rescue,” Keller told school officials. “I hope that when they graduate they will pass on the program and what they’ve learned to others as well.”
Each Thursday after lunch, under the supervision of program coordinator Danielle Llewelyn, a small group of students package the unused food and label it for delivery. Llewelyn, who chairs the school’s science department, then loads the food into her car and runs it to the food pantry, which is a little more than a mile away.
Fountain Valley School students package leftover dining hall fare to be delivered to local nonprofit Connections 4 Life through the school’s Food Rescue Program on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. (Parker Seibold, The Gazette)
“When Fountain Valley contacted us about their Food Rescue program, we thought it was a wonderful fit for us,” said Gretchen Baker, executive director of Connections 4 Life. “It fits well with what we do here, which is to make sure food gets utilized by someone who’s hungry.”
According to the national nonprofit Feeding America, about 40% of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten, often ending up in landfills. That’s about 80 million tons of food that could have been utilized by the millions of Americans battling hunger.
“Food waste is a huge problem, and it’s sad, because it doesn’t have to be that way,” Baker said. “For every bit of food that is thrown away, there is someone, somewhere, who could use it.”
Fountain Valley sophomore Tejin Monroe, a regular participant in the program, agrees.
“It’s just a shame that so much food goes to waste every day,” Monroe said. “It hurts my heart to see food go in the trash can when it could be used to feed someone who is hungry.”
The boarding and day school’s food donations are primarily used by C4L’s all volunteer staff, who work long hours and don’t often have time to prepare meals for themselves, Baker said.
Victoria Stanton, a Fountain Valley School student, labels each bag of food to be delivered through the school’s partnership with Connections 4 Life on Thursday, Jan 25, 2024. The weekly community engagement initiative is reducing the schools carbon footprint and promoting sustainable habits among students and faculty. (Parker Seibold, The Gazette)
“Any food we don’t use on the day they provide it, we can either give the next day’s staff, or we can give it away,” she said. “We make sure it gets utilized somewhere. One way or another, we don’t want food going into the trash can.”
Sophomore Nat Barrett said she likes knowing her efforts have a positive impact, however indirect, on the community.
“We’re using our food to help people who help other people,” said Barrett, a boarding student from San Diego. “In that way, we’re serving the greater community, and I like that.”
The program dovetails with the school’s philosophy of sustainability and environmental consciousness, Llewelyn said.
“Environmentally, it contributes to a reduction in the school’s carbon footprint by minimizing the waste that’s sent to landfills, and it educates students on the harmfulness of food waste as well as their potential to address the needs of the future,” she said.
Megan Harlan, FVS’s head of school, said it important to instill an ethos of environmental responsibility at an early age.
“They are inheriting this environment that we are leaving them, and it’s going to be a huge part of the problems that they have to solve,” Harlan said. “So we might as well start by giving them the skills and the understanding of the environment that they’re going to inherit.”
On Thursday, a handful of students efficiently packaged and labeled about 20 pounds of food in 15 minutes.
“Some of us have been doing this for a while,” said Monroe, a day student from Colorado Springs. “So we’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
Llewelyn dropped the food off at the pantry before hustling off to class.
“If Connections 4 Life wasn’t so close to the campus, we would have a hard time making this work,” she said.
Baker, who has been involved with the food bank for nearly 25 years, said the Food Rescue program has been a godsend for the staff.
“Last year we gave away more than 200,000 pounds of food to local families,” she said. “That’s a lot of work, and the Food Rescue program makes that work easier. It’s been an incredible blessing.”
Danielle Llewelyn, Fountain Valley School science department chair and leader of the Food Rescue Program, delivers food to Connections 4 Life on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. (Parker Seibold, The Gazette)