About Us
Our Mission
We believe in using the power of technology (and the power of youth!) to harness existing resources to systematically reduce the problems of waste and hunger in our community.
A Hunger Paradox
Our world faces a paradox of food-related problems: 870 million people go hungry daily, but at the same time, 30-50% of food produced around the globe goes to waste. The inequitable distribution of food contributes to hunger - a critical Millennium Development Goal - as well as malnutrition, environmental degradation and global warming. Such food injustice is not limited to developing nations. While 1 out of 6 Americans is likely to suffer from hunger, for instance, 30% of food is thrown out on a yearly basis.
While in large cities like New York, organizations like City Harvest rescue and redirect food to the hungry, redistribution methods have not been implemented in many other areas. In Westchester County - where our founders live - preliminary research indicates that vendors throw out large quantities of recoverable food at the end of each day while up to 20% of the population suffers from hunger.
Our Theory of Change
We address the twin problems of hunger and food waste through a scalable solution that relies on youth engagement and technological innovation. Our youth team approaches and educates local businesses about food injustice and about the U.S. Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act (1996), which allows for food donation with minimal liability. Our team then establishes a regular donation cycle to connect participating vendors to recipient organizations. We also attempt to regularly survey the vendors and organizations we work with so we can better meet their needs.
A unique feature of our program is our use of open-source mapping technology for real-time tracking of food donations. We map every pick-up from participating vendors and every delivery to organizations. Our approach ensures complete transparency, enabling users to visualize our impact on the micro-level. Our approach also encourages community participation by enabling users to start and map their own food recovery initiatives on the local level. In this way, we offer a replicable model that we seek to scale to communities across the country and the globe.
Map Our Impact!
You can map our impact real-time by exploring our map or by perusing individual pick-up and delivery reports. By using the filters located to the right of the map and the reports, you can also track individual vendors and recipient organizations. In the month of June 2013 alone, we rescued 1187 pounds of food!
Keep up to date on our efforts by visiting our blog, liking us on Facebook, and checking out our press and honors. Or click here to learn how you can get involved.
History
In 2012, Natasha Suri’s older sister started a part-time job at a bakery. Within the first week, she often expressed concern about how much food was being thrown out at the end of each day. After doing some research, Natasha began to realize how this bakery’s practices were connected to the globally systemic problems of food waste and hunger. She knew she needed to do think globally and act locally to begin to address this problem. Along with fellow tenth-grader and co-founder Siena Spitzer, Natasha launched FoodSync in April 2012. Since then, FoodSync has rescued thousands of pounds of food and received a number of honors as well as media recognition. Once in high school, Natasha's younger brother, Neil, became the FoodSync website manager and one of the program coordinators.
Additional Information
