Excess Food Recovery Team (EFRT) : Occidental's very own food donation program
The EFRT (Excess Food Recovery Team) program began as a Food Donation initiative by two students at Occidental (Samantha Herdman and Alma Olavarria Gallegos). This year, the Office of Community Engagement was fortunate enough to adopt this program and develop two positions for Food Donation Coordinators. Teagan Langseth-DePaolis ('21) and Olivia Valicenti ('18) have advanced this program through a cooperative partnership with Occidental’s campus dining department. Every two weeks, the EFRT team goes into the kitchen to weigh and label the leftover food from those weeks that the campus dining staff generously organizes for them. After tracking the food for the donation, the program coordinators transport the packaged leftovers to one of their four community partners (Good Shepard Center, Proyecto Pastoral, Recycled Resources, and Union Station Homeless Mission). The EFRT coordinators also submit their tracking forms to the Food Recovery Network once every month to maintain their status as a chapter of that national organization.