Carey Wedler | Activist Post
When UC Berkeley student Komal Ahmad invited a homeless man to lunch three years ago, she was inspired to create an app that would change the lives of hundreds of thousands living on the streets.
When the man asked her for money for food, she took him to lunch instead and learned of his time as a soldier in Iraq. “He’d already gone on two deployments and now he’s come back, he’s 26 and on the side of the road begging for food,” Ahmad said. “It just blew my mind.”
Shortly after her experience, she began an initiative at Berkeley to donate uneaten food from the university’s dining halls to local homeless shelters. The program was so successful that in three years, it has spread to over 140 colleges around the country.
Excess food wastage is a serious problem in the United States. Americans throw outmore food than plastic, paper, metal and glass, and in 2012 (the most recent year with available data), Americans threw out over 35 million tons of food. Meanwhile,1 in 6 Americans goes hungry every year.
As Ahmad said, excess food waste is “literally the world’s dumbest problem.” She noted that “Hunger is bad – it’s terrible everywhere – but in America, in the most prosperous, industrialized country in the world, this just shouldn't exist".
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