Globally, 850 million people go hungry every night, yet every day 150,000 tons of food goes to waste. This reality is the key question for Melissa Flynn’s class of 13 students. This October 14 through 16, a class of seniors, Flynn and principal Megan Stanton-Anderson took a flight to New York City in which they visited the UN Council meetings in New York, learned about food sustainability, and enjoyed many ethnic foods from the New York area.

To do this trip for the first time, DePaul Prep received a large anonymous donation. DePaul Prep works with an organization called Take Action Global that certified them as a “climate action school.” As it turns out, DePaul Prep has been working towards this trip for many years, but the donation plus Take Action Global’s contribution made this trip possible.

The group met at O’Hare Airport at 3:45 am and left via plane heading towards New York, once they arrived they hiked The High Line trail, which is a reclaimed area from old railroad tracks made to emphasize the importance of bringing nature into large cities. After that, the group explored the Chelsea Market where they toured the local shops and restaurants and learned of how local businesses in the area used fresh and local produce.

But their major excursion was a private tour of  the United Nations building based in New York City. They viewed the general assembly room and other meeting rooms where there were actual UN Ambassadors were meeting.

The group then made their way to The Ford Foundation for Social Justice, which is not open to the public, but Take Action Global helped get them in for a lunch and a lecture about Global food waste and they met with the head chef at The Ford Foundation for Social Justice.

The class then headed to Rethink Foods, an organization created by chefs that comes up with new ways to change the way restaurants use their food waste, for example, they take restaurant quality food and repurpose it to give to those in need.

On Wednesday, they visited a special needs school in the Bronx that is working on the health goals of the United Nations to reduce food waste and change the environment for the better. The school also had a large garden like we do at DePaul Prep, and although around 30% of the students at the school are wheelchair bound, all participate in cultivating their garden. Finally, they met with the deputy director in charge of food policy in New York City.

Flynn said that the students were able to see what they talked about in class into action. The students were able to see the effect of the sustainable food goals in real life. The class was also able to see that not only was Flynn the only person threading these goals through, but that there was a whole council around the world working towards the betterment of food sustainability and the environment.

Flynn believes that the students’ learning and betterment of their knowledge about sustainable foods has risen to a new level. DePaul Prep as a school should face the tremendous challenge of food waste within the United States and especially the world.

Food waste is one of the largest fillers of landfills in the U.S. creating tons of methane per day which emits harmful carbon dioxide, and the importance of seeing these things first hand is a huge learning experience for the students who participated in the trip.

For the first time in DePaul Prep history, students were able to learn about global food sustainability first hand and what goes into producing foods and how to emphasize sustainability. 

Flynn said that we are wasting millions of pounds of food every day that could be going towards people who need it because large agricultural countries of the world are making enough food to feed everyone, the problem is on how to get food there. The students that participated in this trip got to see firsthand the systems problem of food waste and hunger management globally.