2016 Food Waste & Hunger Summit
Americans waste 40% of food, or roughly 133 billion pounds every year in the United States. On average, each of us wastes 15 to 20% of our own food each year which is something The Campus Kitchens Project, along with organizations like the Together Counts program, are trying to mitigate. While terrifying quantities of food go uneaten every day, one in six Americans don’t know where their next meal will come from. Of these Americans, 16 million of them are hungry children. Children are going hungry and we could be feeding them with the billions of pounds of healthy food being thrown away.
The Campus Kitchens Project works to divert wasted food to feed hungry families, adults and children. Since 2001, we’ve recovered over 5 million pounds of food – food that would have otherwise been thrown away – and created over 2.7 million meals.
Each spring, The Campus Kitchens Project (CKP) hosts a Food Waste & Hunger Summit in partnership with leading national nonprofit organizations. The Summit brings together professionals, community members, and students to share best practices for fighting food waste and hunger in their communities. It provides an opportunity to learn from experts in the fields of public health, nutrition, social justice, social enterprise, non-profit management and related fields.
Take action in fighting food waste and hunger by joining us at the third annual Food Waste & Hunger Summit to share your ideas on the food waste and hunger relief movement. Click here to register.
The 2016 Food Waste & Hunger Summit will take place April 16-17 in Fayetteville, AR at the University of Arkansas. Keynote speakers will include Secretary Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, Rebecca Vallas, the Director of Policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at The Center for American Progress, and Robert Egger, President and Founder of L.A. Kitchen. To learn more about the 2016 Food Waste & Hunger Summit, click here.
Founded in 2001, The Campus Kitchens Project is a national organization that empowers student volunteers to fight hunger and food waste in their community. On 51 university and high school campuses across the country, students transform unused food from dining halls, grocery stores, restaurants, and farmers’ markets into meals that are delivered to local agencies serving those in need.
For more healthy ideas to get involved in your community, take a look at these other posts from Together Counts!