Help feed Hurricane Maria's 50,000 refugees in FL

In Central Florida, 1 in 6 people are food insecure. Food insecurity implies there is a lack of available financial resources for food at the level of the household. Recently, many Puerto Rican refugees have relocated to Orlando, Florida, and in turn we’ve narrowed our focus to Central Florida. We have teamed up with a group of six Americorps Vistas located in Orlando to develop a strong food recovery network. Thus far, they’ve helped us make incredible progress by reaching out to more than 200 potential food donors and 150 food recipients.

About 24 pounds of food enters Central Florida’s landfills every second. The immense amounts of food waste contribute to the production of an extremely harmful greenhouse gas, methane. Methane is the main contributor to various environmental problems like global warming. In the first two decades after its release, methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The more we build our food recovery network, the less food waste will go into landfills and instead toward individuals facing hunger.

Over time, we’ve had many inquiries from people all over the country about how to bring MEANS to their  community. To help those individuals, we’ve developed an Ambassador Program outlining exactly how to do outreach to both nearby food donors and food recipients. It walks ambassadors through clear steps to build a food recovery network around them. We officially released applications on March 8th. The program is designed for individuals who have a passion for food recovery and the determination to take action and want to know how. If this sounds like something that would interest you, please fill out this form and feel free to contact julia@meansdatabase.org for any questions!

Thank you for all of your help and for your interest in our project. If you have any questions or want to get involved in our mission, you can reach out to us at centralflorida@meansdatabase.org!