Start of Second Stage of Large-Scale Food Distribution Project

I'm thrilled to announce the commencement of the next stage of the Food Distribution and Necessity Project where we will now start large-scale distribution. This has been a long time in the making and we are very excited to get it off the ground and start making tangible differences in our communities! My name is Alexander Binder, but I go by my Greek name Alekos. I love the ocean, football, and I speak Japanese! As an athlete my whole life, I have a special appreciation for food, which sparked me to volunteer at food banks for the last couple of years. Now a senior at Loyola high school, together with UNI, I have been working on a new project that will hopefully make a huge impact to feed those in need. My passion for food service started simply with volunteer work at food banks, where I was exposed to the stark reality of food insecurity that plagued so many individuals and families even in our own communities. One thing that really stuck out was the amount of food wasted even at great food shelters that gave back tremendously to the community. This sparked the idea for this project, which I worked tirelessly on this summer. After months of building relationships with food banks and grocery stores, running sample project runs, accessing surplus food supplies, and finding ways to redirect leftover food to communities in need, I have now started to assemble a team of around twenty students at Loyola High School to become a part of this opportunity to give back. Furthermore, through connections with Cathedral High School, I have recruited a group of students that directly help us carry out our mission. Our vision is simple: to turn compassion into action. As mentioned before, this project will function by leaning on our local supermarket and food bank connections to access large amounts of surplus foods that would otherwise end up in the garbage. These foods will then be distributed by one of our 127 members across SoCal (as of April 2023) to group homes that will immediately benefit from these donations. Our goal is to create an efficient distribution cycle throughout the next years to cover key areas in the Burbank, Los Angeles, and Orange County spaces and eventually, most of Southern California as UNI gets passed into the hands of the next generation with the guidance of its Original Cast in college.