2024-2025 Recap

With the academic year coming to an end, we wanted to reflect and share our accomplishments as a club this year. We recovered 9,159 pounds of food this year--a record high for our chapter! Here are the highlights of our year:

General Meetings

We met nearly every other week to craft, play games, and learn with our FRNds!

Outreach Boothing

From fall Anteater Involvement Fair, to Earth day, to the Campus as a Living Lab Symposium, we spent our year tabling around campus to teach students about food waste, food insecurity, and how to get involved!

Special Events

ARC Cooking Night

One of our most popular events, we hosted our cooking night twice this year! Participants learned how to cook different foods together, found sustainable solutions for scraps, and enjoyed a feast!

Food Finders

We joined Food Finders' Thanksgiving sort and pack event to help provide meal boxes and turkeys to their partner communities!

Grocery BINGO

Bingo is our favorite event, and we hosted it each quarter this year! Members love this event because we provide dinner, give out free groceries as prizes, and everyone goes home with free food!

Potluck/Food Drives

We hosted two potlucks where we shared a feast with FRNd's and other clubs! We also collected dozens of cans to donate to local food pantries!

Farmers' Market Recovery

This year, we launched our first weekly food recovery initiative: gleaning at the Mariners' Church Irvine Farmers' Market! Every Saturday, volunteers regularly collect 200 pounds of surplus produce and transport it to our community partner, Mary's Kitchen Pantry. This initiative helps keep unsold food that is bruised or blemished from the landfill and provides fresh, healthy produce to our community. We were recognized by the UCI Sustainability Resource Center as an Outstanding Environmental and Sustainability Initiative four our farmers' market gleaning.

Move Out Donation Drive

This year, FRN at UCI collaborated with Student Housing to pilot a brand new food recovery initiative during move out. In Arroyo Vista, we provided green bags for residents to use to donate surplus frozen and refrigerated goods that the Basic Needs Center cannot accept. We collected 332 pounds of food, including frozen meals, eggs, dairy products, and spices--all of which went to our partner Mary's Kitchen! Next year, we hope to open up this initiative to more volunteers to help with collecting, weighing, and transporting donations.

Thank you for an amazing year--we're looking forward to fall already!