Fighting Food Waste & Hunger: Cindy's Full Fork Story

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Um, yeah, my name's Cindy.

I'm a first year at Harvard this year studying, um, economics and energy, climate, and environment.

Um, just to give you a brief overview about the Full Fork Initiative, we aim to address food insecurity and food waste in schools right now in the Massachusetts town of Newton.

And this initiative consists of two main programs, the snack and meal bag initiative, as well as a food diversion program.

So, um, first was the snack and meal bag initiative.

I founded that the freshman year of my high school, so 2022.

And that was really inspired by my immigration journey from China to the US when I was six years old.

We moved to Washington State, um, Mercer Island, and that was predominantly white community.

I was the only student there to attend ELL 'cause I couldn't speak any English.

So I felt really disconnected and lonely, and the only thing that provided me comfort was the homemade Chinese meals that my mom packed me for lunch.

There would be things like fried rice or dumplings, and that really f- made me feel a sense of belonging and connected to my culture.

And freshman year of high school, I moved again, um, this time to Newton, Massachusetts, and I really wanted to get involved in community, so I started volunteering at a local food pantry.

But I noticed that the food that we provided were mostly catered towards American tastes, like mac and cheese and peanut butter, while the clients coming in were mostly Latin American.

So I saw that disconnect there.

I really wanted to address it and ensure that everyone has access to culturally appropriate foods.

So that's when I started the meal bag initiative.

We provide meal bags over school breaks when school-provided meals are not pr- available.

And, um, we try to cater it to the Latin America taste preferences because that's where the main demographics of the students in need are.

And we also provide snack bags on weekly basis because we want to m- make sure that high school students have enough food to sustain them through the entire days at school, extracurriculars, and commutes home.

And for elementary schoolers, that they have something to eat during snack time.

We now serve over 100 students weekly across 17 Newton schools with that program.

And the next, uh, the other program under this Full Fork Initiative is the food diversion program.

I started this because while leading a field trip to a local elementary school to teach them about recycling and compost, I saw that most of food being thrown away was actually uneaten and untouched foods that students had to take because of the standardized lunch plates.

So I really wanted to do something about it, especially because my parents grew up in rural China.