'Rescuing' food to feed the hungry

利亚·利扎隆多仍然对每天被扔掉的食物数量感到惊讶.

Her Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, 412 Food Rescue, 利用庞大的志愿者网络回收数千磅的新鲜水果, vegetables, 烘焙食品和其他健康食品，否则会被杂货店扔掉, restaurants, universities, caterers and other businesses.

"We often still can't believe what kinds of food, and how much of it, gets thrown out, especially when we get alerted of large quantities, like from conventions," said Lizarondo, 412 Food Rescue's chief executive and co-founder. "Every single day, from all these meetings, a lot of good food gets thrown out, and whenever we collect from these events, it's always, even for us, extremely shocking."

The food collected by the organization's volunteers, or "food rescue heroes" as they're called, is routed to housing authorities, 汤厨房和各种帮助老年人和其他人的非营利组织.

"Our mission is to get food to where people already are. 他们在哪里生活，在哪里工作和学习，在哪里聚会，”利扎隆多说. “许多生活贫困或粮食不安全的家庭流动性不强——他们没有汽车或高频交通工具. And some food pantries are only open a few times a month, so we mitigate what limits many people from accessing healthy food."

“412食品救援”的想法是在利萨隆多读到美国自然资源保护委员会2012年的一份报告后萌发的。该报告发现，美国浪费了大约40%的食物, or an average 400 pounds of food per person annually.

“我发现了那个罪犯，所以读那篇报道是一个催化的时刻，”她说.

Founded in 2015, 412食品救援最初利用社交媒体将食品供应商与志愿者匹配起来，这些志愿者可以捡起剩余的食品，然后将其送到有需要的机构. 但随着该组织及其支持者数量的增长，这种做法很快变得难以操作. In November 2016, 该组织推出了一款应用程序，使用了与UberEats和DoorDash类似的技术.

"I thought, 如果餐馆现在使用这种共享车辆系统送餐, why can't we use the same model for collecting food?" Lizarondo said.

About 9,000 people have since downloaded the app, 每天从匹兹堡地区大约500家食品零售商那里收到救援机会的通知，并将它们交给600家非营利机构中的任何一家.

Beth Slagle, 412 Food Rescue's co-chair, credits Lizarondo's leadership for the organization's rapid success.

“很多时候，纯粹对非营利使命充满激情的人无法将这种激情转化为商业模式. Leah was not only able to do that, 她正在把这种商业模式变成一种巨大的、难以置信的影响力," Slagle said.

Lizarondo很早就意识到，该组织需要更好的技术来管理其不断扩大的志愿者群体的规模. 这项技术非常成功，以至于412食品救援计划将其应用程序授权给费城的类似项目, San Francisco and Cleveland.

412食品救援组织也启动了一些项目来补充其食品救援任务, 包括烹饪课程，教预算有限的人如何最大限度地获得健康食品.

It also forged partnerships with area farms, orchards and gardens to help redistribute produce "seconds," or products deemed difficult to sell simply for cosmetic reasons, through an agriculture share program called UglyCSA.

In October, Lizarondo and 412 Food Rescue won a $50,美国心脏协会的授权服务城市健康加速器为其提供健康食品直接给食品不安全的人的能力.

Slagle将该组织比作“非营利组织中的金童”，因为它的成长和它的使命在社区中得到了很好的接受.

"Leah leads an amazing team. The staff are amazing, the volunteers are amazing. 我还没有见过像412食品救援组织这样进步如此之快的组织。. “这个组织做到了其他所有非营利组织都希望它能做到的事情."

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