Last month, students from the USC fraternity Phi Kappa Psi launched a food recovery project called GreekEats. Leading the effort is Stephen Ruff, a senior at USC and Phi Kappa Psi’s philanthropy chair. Initially, he raised $3,000 to start this project where he and his fraternity brothers collect leftover food from their fraternity and now eight other fraternities on campus, deliver, and then donate the meals to St. Francis Center.
“I was laying in bed one night just thinking about how much food we throw away every day,” Stephen said, about his inspiration for starting this partnership with SFC.
According to Feeding America, approximately 72 billion pounds of perfectly good food-from every point in the food production cycle-ends up in landfills and incinerators every year.
Stephen, with the help of his fraternity brothers collect the food and then drop it off at SFC several times a week. They started out delivering about 100 meals a week and are now up to about 300 meals a week! He says they are looking to expand the project by rescuing more food from additional fraternities, sororities and hopefully also dining halls around campus.
On average, SFC is serving meals to 200 to 300 homeless guests a day. These USC students’ efforts are helping ensure we have even more fresh, nutritious food to distribute to our guests in need!
For more information on ways you can give back to help SFC’s guests, please visit http://sfcla.org/donate/.
