Food Recovery Network Update
The Food Recovery Network at Santa Clara University will be celebrating its second year recovering food this May.
The program started as a SLURP project in January 2014, and has since evolved into a Registered Student Organization that has donated over 8,200 pounds of food to date. At the beginning of April, Paloma Sisneros-Lobato & Makena Wong, the chapters’ co-founders, had the opportunity to attend FRN’s first National Food Recovery Dialogue. This inspiring event was held at the University of Maryland, home to the first FRN chapter. Leaders in food recovery policy and innovation spoke to student leaders from universities all around the United States.
Paloma and Makena were also invited to speak on a panel to share their success in recovering from large events such as The Beer and Bacon Classic at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. The event concluded with a day of lobbying for food recovery legislation at the Capitol in Washington D.C., where Makena and Paloma had the honor of meeting with staff from Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office. The National Food Recovery Dialogue was attended by over 400 students and 100 professionals in the field. The event highlighted the incredible work that the Food Recovery Network does and acknowledged that it has grown to be the largest student-run food recovery movement in the United States in just five years. SCU is proud to have joined this movement at its beginning stages and volunteers continue to fight food waste on campus by recovering food from Benson twice a week.