Thanks to the effort of an elementary school student, bags full of food from lunches at one Watertown school will be saved and made available to those who visit the Watertown Community Fridge.
Setting up a program to collect the food and make it available to those who need it was a multi-year effort. Now third-grader Naomi Ward first got the idea of trying to save food from lunches at Lowell Elementary School when she was in first grade.
“I saw all the food that had been thrown away because we were just eating in our classroom. And my mom was taking me to the Community Fridge … because our family puts stuff in there every once in a while,” Naomi said. “I was seeing all the food that was being taken (from the fridge), and then I sort of combined them in my head. And thought about how the food was food that the school was already buying — it wouldn’t be making them pay more money.”
The Watertown Community Fridge, located outside the former Watertown United Methodist Church at 80 Mt. Auburn St., is open 24/7 and has a philosophy of “Take what you need, give what you can.”
Getting approval to save the food required Naomi and her mom, Erin, to go through several layers of government to get final approval.
“We went to the Board of Health, and then we went to Senator Brownsberger so that he could talk to DESE (Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) about it,” Naomi said.
Erin said she worked with Watertown Director of Health Abbey Myers, the Watertown Public Schools Food Service Department and even Superintendent Dede Galdston to get approval and come up with a plan for how to run the program, known as Lowell Food for All.
Lowell Assistant Principal Tara Rufo arrived at Lowell this year, and she saw that the effort was well underway.
“It was impressive to see how much work Naomi and her family had done to secure all the legalities of having this type of a system,” Rufo said.
At each lunch, students take uneaten items from their school lunch and leave them to be donated to the Community Fridge.
“There’s baskets in the middle of the table, and kids who don’t want food can put their unopened food, or like a whole apple, into the basket,” Naomi said.
The food then gets placed in a large fridge with glass doors that sits in the Lowell lunch room. Purchasing the fridge was a big step in getting the program rolling.
“We raised about $2,000 in just four days from a fundraiser, and just the community,” Naomi said. “We used GoFundMe to raise money.”
Rufo said that not all leftover food can go to the Community Fridge. Items must be wrapped in unopened packaging or be whole fruit, such as apples or bananas, where the skin has not been broken.
The program was launched in December, and Naomi had to educate her schoolmates about how it works.
Currently, the teachers with lunch duty put the food from the baskets into the Lowell fridge, but Naomi said there are plans to select student leaders to do so in the future.
Prior to the start of the program, food from Lowell lunches that was not consumed would be composted by the school.
“So we’re already composting so much, but what Naomi saw is that so much of what is getting composted that could actually be eaten,” Rufo said. “So, when we have to open a bag of carrots to dump it into the compost, as opposed to put the still wrapped bag of carrots into the fridge, there’s a difference. We want it to go to a good place.”
Before the food goes to the Community Fridge, Lowell students have a chance to grab something.
“Having seen when a kid asks for something from the fridge, it feels nice. … Can I have a Danimals yogurt? or a cheese stick or carrots or an apple,” Rufo said.
After the first week, Naomi helped deliver food to the Community Fridge.
“We had to carry, like, two full bags of food — two pretty big full bags,” Naomi said. “Actually, my arms are really sore.”
Moving forward, Rufo said, the school hopes to find parent volunteers to make deliveries a couple days a week.
The effort to save food from school lunches may be expanding beyond Lowell.
“My mom got an email from somebody in Hosmer who really wanted to start it at Hosmer,” Naomi said.
Great idea! Bravo Naomi, your parents must be extremely proud of you!
Wow, this was such a great idea and an amazing accomplishment, and is going to help so many people. I commend Naomi, and her mom, for their efforts in making this happen. I hope this is something that will spread to many places. Naomi has made a real difference in the community.
Thank you Naomi and family, staff at Lowell, and others instrumental in making this happen. Young people are leading the way in making a more caring and sustainable future!
Good going, Naomi! You saw a need and worked to make the solution happen.
Thank you, Naomi, for recognizing this need and doing something about it!