Cultivate Food Rescue

The Cultivate mission has gone viral!

A CBS News story about Cultivate’s work to provide local food-insecure students with backpacks containing “real food” has taken the nation by storm.

See the video here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/schools-team-up-with-program-to-package-unused-food-into-take-home-meals-for-students/

We are overwhelmed by the amount of support we’ve received through this initiative—and we’re amazed at all the interest people like you have expressed to take this nationwide.

Cultivate is a local food rescue organization dedicated to helping food-insecure people in our community. We work with large food-service organizations like universities, caterers, hospitals, food distributors, and school corporations to rescue prepared, unserved food. Once food is rescued, our volunteers help package and prepare frozen meals, which are distributed to programs like our backpack program in the video above.

Two of Cultivate’s main goals are feeding hungry children who don’t have access to healthy food and improving the food quality in backpack programs like this one.

To accomplish these goals, we’re running pilot backpack programs at two local elementary schools. With the partnership of Kelly Cares Foundation and Notre Dame, we’re able to provide 100 students at Madison STEAM Academy with meal-filled backpacks. Additionally, thanks to Greater Elkhart Chamber Leadership Academy, we’re also providing backpacks for 20 students at Woodland Elementary School.

Since our organization began in 2016, our vision has been to create a model that can be replicated in other places, not just northern Indiana—and it’s exciting to see other people sharing our vision. In just one day, we received more than 250 requests from people who wanted to implement this kind of program in their own communities.

We want to see backpack programs in place all over the country—but to make that happen, we need your help! Cultivate is a small, four-person not-for-profit organization, but with your financial support, we can carry out our mission of replicating Cultivate’s model.

Our goal is to create a community of like-minded individuals and organizations that share ideas and best practices for starting a successful food rescue operation.

If you share our vision of feeding the hungry and want to get involved, we’d love to have you on board! Visit our website, like us on Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, or donate today!

Cultivate depends on individuals like you. A donation of ANY size will help us accomplish our mission and feed hungry children—not just in Indiana, but across the country.

Thanks for working alongside us to eliminate food insecurity!