Students in the Food Recovery Network put hot meals on the table

More volunteers want to help a fledgling group of University of Hawaii students divert unsold UH-Manoa food to Hawaii’s largest homeless shelter — and plans are in the works to double the food donations starting this week.

The UHM Food Recovery Network also is in talks to possibly expand its food deliveries to include Waikiki’s Youth Outreach drop-in center and to Kakaako’s Next Step Shelter.

“We’re receiving so many volunteers that we’re able to plan on expanding,” said the group’s president, Heather Fucini, a UH junior majoring in dietetics. Since the network took shape five months ago, membership has shot to 57 from the founding five members.

The mission of the UHM Food Recovery Network is simple: Follow food safety guidelines and collect unsold and uneaten food on campus that would otherwise go to Oahu’s pigs — and instead divert it to feed the homeless.

Before they were even recognized as Hawaii’s first chapter of the national Food Recovery Network, Fucini and her UH classmates Joy Nagahiro-Twu, Mariah Martino, Victoria Duplechain and Chrisann Hinson in December began collecting the first of 1,752 pounds of unsold food at UH’s cafeterias and delivering it every Friday to the Institute for Human Services within a two-hour window — and at the proper temperature — to ensure food safety.

They slowly began adding more members after they became an official chapter in January.

Then 30 more volunteers signed up at a UH Earth Day event last week, giving the group enough people to collect and distribute food twice a week, starting today.

The concept requires little more than two to three hours of volunteer work during each food “recovery” to wrap up and deliver unsold food.

It’s a movement that’s gaining traction since the UHM Food Recovery Network was profiled in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last month.

The group has since been contacted by a student at UH Hilo. And Kapiolani Community College student Raiyan Rafid is looking into organizing a similar chapter on his campus.

“I thought it would be awesome to start one here,” Rafid said. “KCC has one of the best culinary (programs), but every day I see a lot of food that no one is buying.”

Last week a charter school in Kaimuki — the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability, or SEEQS — invited Fucini, Nagahiro-Twu and Martino to speak to its middle-school students about all of the uneaten food that goes to waste every day in America while “1 in 6 Americans go hungry,” Fucini said. “And 1 in 4 are children.”

At the same time, “nutritious meals are being sent to the landfills,” Fucini told the students. “Perfectly good food is being thrown away.”

The message stuck with seventh-grader Kailani Takahashi, 13, who is regrowing discarded produce with her classmates in a “scrap garden” project.

“I never knew how much of the food we throw away can actually be eaten — and how homeless people can’t always eat,” Takahashi said.

Waikiki Health, which runs Kakaako’s Next Step Shelter and jointly operates Waikiki’s Youth Outreach for homeless and at-risk youth with the nonprofit Hale Kipa, also contacted the UHM Food Recovery Network.

Next Step lacks the necessary refrigeration and ovens to properly store and reheat food. But Fucini thinks her group can work around the hurdle — and still maintain food safety standards — by delivering UH food to the shelter right at mealtime.

There don’t seem to be any obstacles to providing food to Youth Outreach, which serves 30 to 50 hot meals four times a week.

The organization is grateful for the donated food it already receives, said Kent Anderson, Youth Outreach’s director of preventative health.

“However, there are a number of meals that are still uncovered,” Anderson said. “Having a consistent supply of nutritious and hot meals will be very beneficial for the youth that we serve. This (UHM Food Recover Network) program … is fantastic, and I look forward to partnering with them.”

The group’s growing number of volunteers has Fucini excited about the possibility of collecting and donating food out of UH five times a week and providing it to homeless people in need around Oahu.

In the meantime she and the other volunteers plan to continue spreading the message that perfectly good food is going to waste every day.

To reinforce the idea, Fucini, Nagahiro-Twu and Martino quizzed the students at SEEQS about both the needs of hungry homeless people and the volume of food that’s discarded across the country.

As a reward, the founding members of the UHM Food Recovery Network handed out a tangerine to each student who answered their quiz correctly.

But Fucini, Nagahiro-Twu and Martino have dedicated themselves to make a difference in ensuring that no one on Oahu goes hungry.

At the end of their presentation, they made sure every SEEQS student left with a handful of healthy fruit.

For more information about the UHM Food Recovery Network, send email to uhmfrn@gmail.com.