User:Maple Leaf Harvest/sandbox

Helen verDuin Palit is an American social entrepreneur responsible for the creation of multiple food recovery programs across the world.

History
In 1981, Helen managed Yale University's Dwight Hall Soup Kitchen in New Haven. Through a program called the New Haven Salvage Project, she designed a system in which unused food in the community could be distributed to soup kitchens and other similar services such as shelters and food pantries.

In 1982, she expanded this system into a program called City Harvest in New York City at the request of Mayor Edward Koch. She also helped train others to create similar Harvest programs in other parts of the USA.

In 1990, Helen created the nonprofit America Harvest which focused on teaching the principles of the Harvest system to other communities in areas including USA (Philadelphia, Honolulu), Japan, Germany, and Australia. Moreover multiple other grassroots food recovery systems were inspired by her work all around the world, including in France, Fiji, Israel, and others.

In 1995, she created Angel Harvest in Los Angeles to manage and redistribute unused food.

In 2014, she created Maple Leaf Harvest to apply the food recovery system she created and implemented at City Harvest and Angel Harvest to the Canadian environment [.

Awards/Honours
1989 - President George Bush Sr. named Helen verDuin Palit his Fourth Point of Light in his Thousand Points of Light Community Service Award.

2014 - Recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor