Not doing something because a problem is too big just wasn’t an answer I was prepared to accept. My philosophy was that feeding 100 people meant that was 100 people fed who previously weren’t. But perhaps that naivete worked to my advantage - it just didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t solve it so I didn’t feel too daunted to act. I was ready - that was just the push I needed to launch OzHarvest.Įven then, I still didn’t fully comprehend the scale of the problem of hunger. I accompanied a friend who’d started a social enterprise on a trip, and she showed me what she’d built and the impact it had. I had lived in Australia for more than 20 years and returned to South Africa for a visit that spurred me into action. I had started taking action on a small scale - dropping off leftover food at a shelter in Sydney - but felt on the cusp of something more substantial. Working in events, I saw food waste on a massive scale and was appalled by it. I had a strong need to understand why I’d been put on this earth and felt there must be more I could do than just look after me and my immediate family. It has really been over the past 20 years that my drive to address food waste developed. I still am very ordinary and I’m proud to be! After all, ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things. Indeed, being an activist in South Africa where I grew up could be dangerous. I had no aspiration to be an activist, start a charity, or be a leader. People often think that when I was younger I must have had a drive to cause change - that I must always have been a bit of an activist, a Greta Thunberg as a teenager. They don’t just listen to our instructions across the dinner table - they really do something about it! The power of an ordinary person They really understand the impact they can have. Just look at Greta Thunberg and the climate strikers. There is a palpable sense of purpose and momentum. The younger generations are so connected to action - I find that really exciting and encouraging. But we all have power as individuals - we just need to own it and put it to use, whether by taking action in our own households, schools and communities writing letters to our representatives or holding supermarkets to account. And it can be very hard for people to imagine they can make any kind of difference as an individual. It would be easy to be discouraged by the figures around food wastage and food security. But that is the reality of food waste and hunger, and the challenge OzHarvest tackles by rescuing food and distributing it to charities that can best reach people in need. Given that a third of all food goes to waste, it’s hard to comprehend so many people could still be in such desperate need. Food security isn’t just an issue in far away places. We are less likely to have understood that people need food right here in our own country. We have all grown up with the message that wasting food is bad, and that is a good start, but it’s always been ‘elsewhere’ in a far-flung and hard to imagine place. “Finish what’s on your plate - there are people starving in China/Africa/Asia!” It’s the well-worn refrain of our childhood dinners. Today she is a hero to many and OzHarvest’s distinctive yellow vans are beacons of welcome and hope across Australia, having rescued food for some 117 million meals. When liability laws threatened to derail her efforts, she changed the law. Ronni Kahn AO founded food rescue charity OzHarvest in 2004 after realising how much food was going to waste in restaurants, shopping centres, conference rooms, airports, cafes and catering companies across the country.
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