LFA’s Volunteering and Community Outreach group met March 6 at South Bend-based Cultivate Food Rescue, which rescues more than a million pounds of food that would be thrown away to provide it for the hungry across three Indiana counties.
Several LFA employees spent part of their Thursday afternoon packaging meals for the food insecure. By the end of the two-hour volunteer shift, the group had boxed more than 300 meals.
Environmental Document Specialist Lisa Harris, MSES/MPA, said, “It was great to volunteer for a local organization that feeds those in need. My prior work as a chef made it extra special, stepping briefly into a kitchen again. It has been a long time since I’ve wrangled hotel pans.”
According to Cultivate Food Rescue,133 billion pounds of food are wasted in the United States every year, which means these resources go straight into landfills, giving off methane gas which has long-term environmental effects. Meanwhile, people are hungry.
At Cultivate, volunteers work to cook, package and freeze this otherwise wasted food so it can be distributed to the more than 63,000 people across three counties who are defined as being food insecure, meaning, they aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from.
Administrative Assistant Melissa Frankiewicz said, “It was a great team effort, our group personally packaged all our meals and went on to perform prep work for food to be packaged by the next shift. And we still finished early!”
These meals and other pantry staples are sent out to local churches, food banks, homeless shelters, and schools to feed the most vulnerable in our community. If you are interested in having your company, organization or family volunteer or donate, just check out their website here.
LFA President Paul Hummel said, “Lawson-Fisher prides itself on truly being a part of the communities where we do our civil engineering work. Staff are encouraged to volunteer to help our clients communities and neighbors is part of our company vision to ‘enhance valued relationships.’ ”
