Written by: Amanda Jerzak
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2020
In a world where threats and disasters are always possible, there's a team that is always ready to respond to times of need, the "Rescue Heroes.” This is the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) tagline for the long-running show Rescue Heroes, where a team of quick responding heroes help save communities from natural disasters. Much like the show, we have Rescue Heroes who dedicate their time, energy and resources to help those in need. These men and women spend their days going to retail donors, rescuing product that is destined for the landfill and converting it to food to aid in our fight against hunger.
A team of Three Square drivers and a host of agency volunteers dedicate countless hours every week doing this work in order to close the meal gap. More than 19.5 million pounds of consumable waste was recovered in November of 2019 by these Rescue Heroes. Their efforts resulted in more than 16 million meals going back out in the community to be consumed by the hungry rather than going to a landfill.
Throughout the Las Vegas valley, as well as Pahrump, Boulder City and Mesquite, we are depending on this network of agencies to help us advance our mission to provide wholesome food to hungry people, while passionately pursuing a hunger-free community. Without these more than 60 agencies and their dedicated volunteers, we would not be able to reach more than 250 donors to recover the excess product they are graciously choosing to donate instead of discard. We can attempt to make this difference on our own with all of the time and resources we have at our disposal and make minimal impact on the meal gap in our communities. However, working together with our Rescue Heroes and our food donors, we can close the meal gap – region by region – until food insecurity is a thing of the past.