What we're getting wrong in the fight to end hunger | Jasmine Crowe

81,536 views ・ 2020-01-17

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00:12
In June of 2017,
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I volunteered with a group at a local food pantry
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on the south side of my home city
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in Atlanta, Georgia.
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It was a Friday afternoon,
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the day of their weekly food giveaway.
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And as I drove up,
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I saw people beginning to arrive,
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many with their rolling carts in tow,
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prepared to receive their food supply for the week.
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As I was walking in the door, there were about 40 people outside
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waiting in line.
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And I was so excited,
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because there are very few things I enjoy more than giving back.
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But then, as I entered the room where the volunteer meeting was taking place,
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I immediately realized:
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we weren't about to give these people any real meals.
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We were essentially just giving them food.
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I took my place on the assembly line, where -- get this --
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I was in charge of making sure that the Weight Watchers Ding Dongs
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made it into every family's bag.
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As the bags started to come around,
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I'm thinking to myself:
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What on earth are we doing here?
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Each bag contained two 20-ounce diet Snapples,
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a gallon of barbecue sauce,
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a bag of kettle potato chips,
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a box of superhero-shaped vegetable-enriched macaroni noodles,
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a box of belVita breakfast bars,
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a can of refried beans,
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a can of sweet peas,
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a miniature can of corn,
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I can't forget about those Ding Dongs
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and french fried green onions,
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you know, the kind that go on top of a green bean casserole.
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And that was it.
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We made over a hundred of those bags that day,
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and people indeed stood in line to receive one.
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But a feeling came over me;
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I felt bad and a little angry.
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It was like, how could I even feel good about the work that I was doing
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when I knew for a fact that not one meal was to come
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from the food we had just given to over 100 families?
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I mean, who wants to have a meal with barbecue sauce and Ding Dongs?
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(Laughter)
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And the reality is,
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I've been part of this process all my life.
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I've participated in food drives,
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I've collected cans since I was a kid,
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I've donated in the grocery store more times than I can count,
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I've volunteered at shelters, I've worked in food pantries,
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and I'm sure, like me, so many of you have, too.
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In 2013, I even created a pop-up restaurant,
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called Sunday Soul.
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And I rented tables and chairs and linens
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and I printed out menus
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and I took these experiences to alleyways,
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underneath bridges and in parks
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to allow people that were experiencing homelessness
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to dine with dignity.
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So I've invested in this fight for quite some time.
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In almost every major US city,
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the food bank is viewed as a beloved community institution.
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Corporations send volunteers down on a weekly basis
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to sort through food items and make boxes of food for the needy.
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And can drives --
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they warm the hearts of schools and office buildings that participate
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and fill the shelves of food banks and food pantries across the nation.
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This is how we work to end hunger.
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And what I've come to realize
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is that we are doing hunger wrong.
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We are doing the same things
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over and over and over again
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and expecting a different end result.
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We've created a cycle
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that keeps people dependent on food banks and pantries on a monthly basis
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for food that is often not well-balanced
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and certainly doesn't provide them with a healthy meal.
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In the US, our approach to doing good,
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or what we call "charity,"
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has actually hindered us from making real progress.
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We're educating the world on how many people are food insecure.
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There are television commercials,
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billboards,
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massive donations,
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the engagement of some of our biggest celebrities in the fight.
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But the ever-present reality is that,
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even with all of this work,
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millions of people are still going hungry.
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And we can do better.
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Globally, 821 million people are hungry.
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That's one in nine people on this planet.
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And here in the United States,
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nearly 40 million people experience hunger every single year,
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including more than 11 million children
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that go to bed hungry every night.
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Yet, we're wasting more food than ever before --
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more than 80 billion pounds a year,
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to be exact.
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The EPA estimates that food waste has more than doubled
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between 1970 and 2017,
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and now accounts for 27 percent of everything in our landfills.
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And as this food sits, it gradually rots
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and produces harmful methane gas,
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a leading contributor to global climate change.
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We have the waste of the food itself,
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the waste of all the money associated with producing this now-wasted food
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and the waste of labor with all of the above.
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And then there's the social inequity
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between people who really need food and can't get it
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and people who have too much and simply throw it away.
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All of this made me realize that hunger was not an issue of scarcity
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but rather a matter of logistics.
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So in 2017, I set out to end hunger using technology.
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After all, food delivery apps had begun to explode on the scene,
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and I thought surely we can reverse-engineer this technology
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and get food from businesses like restaurants and grocery stores
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and into the hands of people in need.
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I believe that technology and innovation
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have the power to solve real problems,
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especially hunger.
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So in 2017, I created an app
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that would inventory everything that a business sells
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and make it super easy for them to donate this excess food
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that would typically go to waste at the end of the night.
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All the user has to do now is click on an item,
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tell us how many they have to donate,
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and our platform calculates the weight and the tax value
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of those items at time of donation.
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We then connect with local drivers in the shared economy
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to get this food picked up and delivered directly to the doors
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of nonprofit organizations and people in need.
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I provided the data and the analytics
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to help businesses reduce food waste at the source
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by letting them know the items that they waste repeatedly
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on a regular basis,
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and they even saved millions of dollars.
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Our mission was simple:
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feed more, waste less.
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And by 2018, our clients included the world's busiest airport,
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Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson,
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and we were working with brands and corporations
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like Hormel, Chick-fil-A and Papa John's.
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We even had the opportunity to work with the NFL for Super Bowl LIII.
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And over the last two years, we've worked with over 200 business
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to divert more than two million pounds of edible food from landfills
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into the hands of people that needed it most.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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This has accounted for about 1.7 million meals
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and allowed us to start to expand our efforts to other cities,
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like Washington, DC, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and more.
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That's just one approach that actually tackles the problem.
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Another was the launch of our pop-up grocery stores.
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We recover excess food from businesses
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and set up free community grocery stores right in the middle of food deserts.
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We bring out a chef,
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and we do on-site taste-testings and allow families to leave with recipe cards.
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We give every family reusable grocery bags and allow them to simply shop
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minus the price tag.
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We wanted to give people access to meals
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and not just food.
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We wanted to change the way that we think and work to solve hunger in this country,
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get people to believe that we can solve hunger,
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not as a nonprofit,
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not as a food bank
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but as a social enterprise,
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with the goal of reducing waste and ending hunger.
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But it hasn't been as easy as I thought
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to change the narrative and the thought process
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on how we think that hunger can be solved.
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In 2016, France became the first country
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to ban supermarkets from throwing away unused food.
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Instead, they must donate it,
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and they're fined if they don't.
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Yes.
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(Applause)
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In 2017, Italy followed suit,
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becoming the second European nation
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to pass an anti-food-waste ban.
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And they stated it so simply as it was passed through legislation:
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"We have millions of pounds of good food going to waste,
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and we have poor people that are going hungry."
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That simple.
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Denmark now has a mandated food waste grocery store.
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Its name: Wefood.
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They recover excess food from local grocery stores
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and sell it at up to a 50 percent off discount.
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They then use all the proceeds and donate it to emergency aid programs
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and social need issues for the people in need.
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It has been hailed as "the Goodwill of grocery."
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And last year, the world got its first pay-what-you-can grocery store,
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when Feed it Forward opened in Toronto.
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Their shelves remain stocked by recovering excess food
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from major supermarkets
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and allowing families to simply pay what they can
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at their grocery store.
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This is amazing.
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This innovation we need more of.
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Everyone can take on the roles of changing the attitudes
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about how we solve hunger.
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When we think of how we've allowed innovation and technology
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to change our lives,
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from how we communicate with each other
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to how we view our entertainment
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to how we even receive food,
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it's amazing that we haven't solved hunger yet.
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We literally have cars that can drive themselves
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and millions of people that cannot feed themselves.
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With millions of dollars being donated to end food insecurity,
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we should've solved hunger years ago.
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And I asked myself --
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(Applause)
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I asked myself, why can't we escape this vicious cycle?
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Why haven't we solved this problem?
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I remember meeting with investors and pitching the idea,
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trying to raise funds for my business,
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and one of them said to me, in true seriousness,
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"Hunger is already being solved,"
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as if millions of people weren't going to go to bed hungry that very night,
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and as if there was nothing else to do.
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And the reality is,
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one would think that hunger is being solved,
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but the truth is, it's being worked on.
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If we really want to solve hunger,
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then we have to change the way we've been doing it.
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The same actions will always garner the same results.
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There are hundreds of social entrepreneurs all over the world.
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They have a focus to solve really big problems, like hunger,
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but they'll never get the same support
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that we give national hunger-fighting organizations and food banks.
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But, if given the opportunity,
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they have the ability to foster insight
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and perhaps be forward-thinking enough
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to solve this problem.
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That's why I'm traveling the world
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and I'm really talking about what hunger looks like in America
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and explaining the difference between giving people access to food
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and access to meals.
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I've been meeting with city council members
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and city organizers across the US
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and telling them that technology indeed does have the power
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to connect businesses with surplus food
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to people in need,
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and explaining to them what a meal can actually mean to a family.
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I've been meeting with school boards and school districts
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to talk about how we feed hungry children,
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and health care organizations,
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sharing the message that food is health,
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and food is life,
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and that, by solving hunger, we can solve so many more problems.
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So if we want to know
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that we don't live in a nation
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where perfectly good food goes to waste
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when our neighbors don't have food to eat,
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then we need to change the laws.
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We need to introduce new policies,
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and, most importantly, we need to change our minds and our actions.
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Food drives are fine.
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Food banks serve a huge purpose.
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And yes, sometimes I like Ding Dongs, too.
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But the reality is that food drives do not solve hunger.
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And if we are smart about connecting the dots
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that are right in front of our noses,
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we can do far more than give a family
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a box of superhero-shaped vegetable-enriched macaroni noodles
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and a gallon of barbecue sauce
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to feed themselves.
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Instead, we can give them back their dignity.
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Perhaps we can increase school attendance in schools.
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We can improve the health outcomes for millions.
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And, most importantly, we can reduce food waste in our landfills,
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creating a better environment for all of us.
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The thing I love most is that we can feel good about it in the process.
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If we solve hunger,
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we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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So let's do it.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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