PUBLIC HEALTH ALUMNI RESCUE PRODUCE FOR LOCAL HUNGER RELIEF
I
n the U.S., about 14.5 percent of the general population is food insecure at some point in their lives, meaning that they don’t have reliable access to enough food to keep them healthy. At the same time, 30 percent of the food in America goes to waste every year. That situation felt very wrong for a group of School of Public Health students. In 2015, Samantha Friedrichsen, Kelzee Tibbetts, Eva Weingartl, Hannah Volkman, and Mike Kosiak were all MPH students and, although mostly in different programs, they became friends
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ADVANCES / SPRING 2019
because they shared a common goal. “We believed we could make a difference in public health. And that if we could, we should,” says Friedrichsen.
FINDING THEIR FOCUS As first-year students, Friedrichsen and Weingartl took “Issues in Environmental Health,” a required course for all MPH students. They remember feeling overwhelmed with all the public health issues in the world needing attention. “Our professor said to just pick
one. ‘That’s all you can do,’ he said,” says Friedrichsen. “‘Pick one and try to improve it.’” A year later, the five students founded Twin Cities Food Justice (TC Food Justice), a growing volunteer organization that “rescues” produce from small grocery stores and farmers markets that would otherwise be thrown out and delivers it to organizations that work with food insecure communities. Today, Friedrichsen, Tibbetts, Weingartl, and Volkman remain involved with the organization. They chose produce as their focus because it’s a food item that often goes to waste and is nutritionally dense, and also because food shelves traditionally stock
PHOTOGRAPH BY SELENA SALFEN
FOSTERING FOOD JUSTICE
