Helping Ninjas packed over 1000 meals to families in need during their volunteer service hours at Second Helpings!
Helping Ninja students Sophia, Sid, Leo, Layla, Sawyer, and Skyler volunteered alongside Second Helpings Food Rescue and Hunger Relief Chefs, Staff and Volunteers. Our Helping Ninja volunteers had the opportunity to experience a hands-on food rescue and hunger relief kitchen at local non-profit Second Helpings in Indianapolis.
Helping Ninjas provided hands on help creating meals for those in need in their community.
For more than 25 years, Second Helpings has operated a three-part approach to addressing hunger and poverty in Central Indiana. Helping Ninja volunteers helped to pack home-made and nutritious meals made by the Second Helpings Culinary Kitchen into family meal to go kits.
Helping Ninjas helped to prepare family meal boxes. Each family meal box was unwrapped and stickers were placed on boxes and each meal was carefully weighed.
These meals were made in the Second Helpings Kitchen with rescued food that Second Helpings collects each week in their vans.
Five days each week, Second Helpings sends out refrigerated trucks and vans to rescue bread, produce, meat and much more from local donors.
That rescued food is used to create more than 5,500 nutritious meals each day that are distributed to more than 200 social service agencies that feed those in need.
Helping Ninjas helped to place stickers on the family meal kits.
Second Helping’s family meal kit stickers included the name of the dish, the date packed and a feedback review code sticker.
Helping Ninjas packed over 1000 meals to families in need during their volunteer service hours. Second Helpings provides more than 200 local nonprofit partners over 1 million meals each year, at no charge.
Each nutritious family meal was packed and weighed to be distributed later this afternoon to families in need.
Each meal approximately 2 lbs per family of four. Home-made and healthy meals that were packed today included pulled pork, ravioli and beef ravioli.
Helping Ninjas helped to pack over 1000 meals for families in need.
Collectively, Helping Ninjas packed 14 bins full of pre-packed nutritious meals that will be distributed to families in need. Each orange bin contains 18 family kit meals for a family of four.
These meals are provided for free to more than 100 partner organizations: day cares, community centers, after-school programs, homeless shelters, and more, that feed families in need.
Second Helpings prepares and delivers more than 5,500 nutritious meals EACH day.
The rescued food is turned into meals and is prepared by Second Helpings Chefs, Culinary Job Training program chefs and volunteers.
Each day, Second Helpings volunteers and staff rescue prepared and perishable food from wholesalers, retailers and restaurants – preventing unnecessary waste. Second Helpings rescues more than 3.7 million pounds of food a year.
Helping Ninja volunteers had the opportunity to put some of this rescued food to good use!
Volunteers helped to prep food for tomorrow’s chefs meals.
Helping Ninja volunteers opened packages of spring mix veggies, kale and snow peas for a nutrition packed stew that would be made in the kitchen tomorrow to be distributed to families in need.
Helping Ninjas prep fresh vegetables are prepped for tomorrow’s food rescue and hunger relief kitchen. Each veggie bin must be weighed and stored until tomorrow’s chefs begin!
Helping Ninja volunteers got to compost at Second Helpings.
The Second Helpings food rescue team is so efficient, that they recycle everything from cardboard food cartons to composting any food scraps and they also donate any non-perishable items not needed in the kitchen to local non-profits.
Compost food scraps collected from Second Helpings food preparation in the kitchen today.
Did You Know?
At Second Helpings, the rescued food is turned into meals for those in need by Second Helpings Chefs and Culinary Job Training program in-training chefs and volunteers?
And, Second Helpings was founded by three Chefs set forth to solve all four problems—food waste, hunger, job training, and a source of skilled labor for the local food service industry—with one solution: turn unused food into meals and jobs.
In 1998, the first full month of operation, 37 volunteers helped rescue 7,000 pounds of food and prepare 3,074 meals.
Today, Second Helpings is a community kitchen that prepares and delivers more than 1 million meals to the central Indiana community each year.
“We’re not just teaching people to cook. We’re providing an avenue for people to transform their own lives. We don’t just collect food. We rescue food, because we refuse to stand by and allow waste, while so many in our community do not have the healthy food they need to thrive.”
Second Helpings offers a free Culinary Job Training program available to unemployed and underemployed adults in Central Indiana. (It is a program which prepares adults with barriers to employment for careers in the food service industry.) More than 1,000 adults have graduated from their program. Second Helpings alumni are working in Central Indiana as cooks, executive chefs, business owners and culinary instructors.
