Brandon Kwok, an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, has been a Food Link volunteer for five years. Inspired by a desire to reduce food waste, Brandon interned with Food Link this past summer, giving him a front-row seat at aspects of food rescue operations beyond weekly volunteer shifts. Continue on to read Brandon’s reflection on stepping into the background side of food rescue: scheduling, partner relationships, and researching potential new food donors.

Five years ago, I started volunteering with Food Link. I didn’t know anything about food waste prior to volunteering so everything caught me by surprise very quickly. I learned many valuable lessons about how much food goes to waste each day and how many people experience food insecurity. Even just within the several towns surrounding the Food Link Hub, we serve different communities filled with people who aren’t as fortunate as others, with limited access to nutritious foods.

Volunteering with Food Link led me to write several papers and create multiple projects about food waste and food insecurity, encouraging others to volunteer or donate excess food before it expires. My end goal is to reduce food waste and get more food to people who are food insecure.

This past summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to go back to Food Link as their summer intern. My main project was to do outreach to surrounding grocery stores to see if they had excess food and wanted to become a Food Link partner. I also helped out with everyday operations: picking up food, sorting for quality, and delivering to Food Link’s partners throughout Greater Boston.

I made numerous phone calls to local food retailers to tell them about Food Link and our food rescue program. Through this project, I met with store managers, co-managers, and receiving staff. Within a few weeks, I made contact with two grocery stores about donating food.

Toward the end of my summer internship, I was fortunate enough to do the first pickup at one of the stores I connected with during my project. This donation filled one of our vans with more than a dozen boxes of frozen goods and a few boxes of non-perishables. Although I wasn’t too happy with the results of the majority of grocery stores uninterested in donating excess food, I took this pickup as a huge win. This was the start of a new beginning for Food Link – prior to this project, many of Food Link’s food donors had come from recommendations, not outreach by our organization.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in today, some corporations prefer to maximize their profits over limiting the amount of waste they create. Looking forward, I hope that more grocery stores will do their part by donating their excess and expired food to organizations like Food Link. As the amount of people experiencing food insecurity continues to rise, all I do is hope that everyone will do their part.

Thank you to Brandon for sharing about interning at Food Link.

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The Impact of a Food Rescue Internship