Food Forward Rescues 1 Million Pounds of Fresh Local Produce for the Needy
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It is documented by the LA Times that in the greater Los Angeles area, 1 in 6 individuals are food insecure – this translates into over a million men, women or children who at some point in the last year did not know where their next meal would come from.
Food Forward, a grassroots volunteer-powered organization based in Los Angeles, has gone from harvesting a single backyard in winter 2009, yielding 800 pounds of citrus, to becoming the largest harvesting-for-the-hungry organization in Southern California – rescuing its 1,000,000th pound in just over three years.
We have achieved this through practicing FRUITANTHROPY: the collecting, picking dispensing and receiving of fruit for humanitarian purposes.
The simple equation of local volunteers + local backyard fruit = 100% to the hungry is what the organization was built on. We have since scaled from one tangerine tree, one volunteer delivering to one food pantry – to over 1700 active volunteers, over 500 individual harvests and 25+ agencies receiving our produce across three counties.
We celebrate the millionth pound harvested the summer of 2012 with pride in our achievement but also a gratitude for the abundance already existing in our everyday lives and our goal of enlightening people to realize what they have in their own backyards can literally change the lives of those who are in need around them.
We operate entirely by social media, engaging groups big and small to understand the power of a single action: plucking an orange from a tree – and how easy it is to become a change agent, and the personal empowerment that comes with that. Our volunteers include five year-olds to seventy-five years old who are organized into harvesting corps from small groups gathered in and around a single tree, to massive harvesting parties in the hundreds. For the later, we assemble at large public and private orchards to reconnect with the rich agricultural history of an urban center which only a few decades ago existed as a half-million acres of commercial citrus.
Rick Nahmias, Founder and Executive Directr of Food Forward adds, ‘With this millionth pound donated to those in need we redefine how we can address basic needs and employ simple solutions in innovate ways that merge the ancient and the contemporary.’
Harvest Food – Fight Hunger – Build Community is more than our motto, it’s the core fruity gospel Food Forward lives by.
More About This Charity
Region
West
Category
Best New Charity
Name
Food Forward
Mission
Food Forward’s mission is to reconnect people with people – through food – by bringing together volunteers and neighbors to share in the gleaning and distributing of locally grown food from private homes and public spaces which is then distributed to local food pantries and organizations serving those in need.
Impact
- 1,000,000 lbs of fresh local backyard fruit harvested and donated to local agencies serving our community’s most vulnerable
- 1,000,000 people have been helped by this Achievement
- This charity has raised $175,000
Works In
United States
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