It was 1980, and Helen Palit, nee VerDuin, was eating some potato skins at a lunch kitchen in New Haven, Connecticut. "All of a sudden," she says, "I wondered what happened to the [potatoes] insides." What happened was that the insides were thrown away, along with tons of other food. Hmmm, thought Palit.
Thus was born a huge, and hugely successful, free meal delivery system. Palit started gathering food from restaurants all over New Haven and redistributing it to soup kitchens and shelters. Two years later, she took her idea to New York and founded City Harvest. A former City councilman found her some office space, the Children's Aid Society made some donations, and on the first day, a meat wholesaler donated 2,000 pounds of fresh beef. Palit says that it was a smart, simple idea. It soon grew beyond what she could have ever imagined.
Her philosophy of giving started early. "The message I got at home was to give back to the community," she says. By age six, Palit was wrapping care packages for mental health patients, and in high school she was managing a soup kitchen for her church. So helping out poor people in New York was a natural extension of her experience. "They come with their shoulders all hunched over," she says of some of the first people to use City Harvest. "In this real hoarse whisper, they say, 'Is this where I can get something to eat?' They're ashamed."
Apparently, upwards of 20% of the food prepared in restaurants, bakeries, and kitchens otherwise goes to waste. To New York's credit, many of the city's restaurants jumped at the chance to do something positive with their leftover food, whether that was homemade soup, fresh salads, tandoori chicken, boeuf bourgignon, or the insides of potatoes. Palit also scouted lavish parties and collected everything from hors doeuvres to fancy desserts. She delivered it all to the social service agencies who were feeding the hungry for free.
This is now Helen Palit's mission. She's secured financial contributions from individuals as well as companies, she manages a small staff and a fleet of vans, and she coordinates food donations from 600 suppliers. She and her coworkers pick up and deliver enough food for 4,500 meals a day. Nothing is ever stored; it goes directly from the suppliers to the shelters.
Palit takes little credit for this enterprise, even though she is the one who makes it all work. "People are just so incredible," she marvels. "They want to give, and I'm just trying to make it really easy for them."
Update:
City Harvest exploded--in a good way. Angel Harvest in Los Angeles came next, soon to be followed by Aloha Harvest in Honolulu. And that was just the beginning. By 2011, 125 Harvest programs in United States and Canadian cities were providing enough food for 700,000 meals a day. Palit is president of the Board of Directors with America Harvest, Inc., which oversees many of the programs. In just 12 years, Angel Harvest alone provided 8 million meals. The original City Harvest in New York delivers food to 600 soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and community food programs. It distributes more than 25 million pounds of food each year. City Harvest is supported by almost 2,000 food donors and 28,000 financial supporters.
Palit remains on the national board of American Harvest while directing Maple Leaf Harvest, in Toronto. Palit is described with these proud words: As a Social Entrepreneur, Helen pioneered the global perishable food recovery system that today will feed one million people throughout 1,317 cities of the world, 8 billion meals and counting since 1981.