Why this matters now
Food help is being cut. Here’s what we can and can’t do about it.
In 2025, Congress cut SNAP, the program many families use to buy groceries. We can’t replace that help. What we can do is get good food that would be thrown out to people who need it.
The numbers
SNAP is being cut. This is how big the cut is.
18 dots = 4.5 million people8
Starting October 1, 2026, the federal government will pay only 25 percent of the cost of running SNAP in each state, down from 50 percent.10
To be clear: a benefit cut takes away money people use to buy food. Rescued food is a few boxes on a food bank table. One does not replace the other, and we never claim it does.
The limits
What this does not do, in plain words.
What we actually do
Schools throw away good food while people nearby go hungry. We walk sealed, unopened food from a school’s share table to a food bank in the same borough, the same afternoon. We stay inside one borough on purpose; we do not cross the city.
What it changes
Less food in the school’s trash, more food at the food bank that week, and a public record a school can point to when someone asks where its leftovers went.
What it can’t fix
Income, SNAP benefits, rent, wages, or any of the reasons people go hungry in the first place. A pound of rescued food is not a benefit given back, and pretending it is makes a real cut sound smaller than it is.
What has to go right
Many more schools than the one we are setting up in. A signed food bank partner in every borough we work in; three of the four have none yet. Routes that keep running after students graduate. A health department that accepts our records. Food banks that can take fresh food the same day.
How you’d know it isn’t working
Pounds going up while food banks say nothing has changed. Boxes arriving too warm. Gaps in the log, or more corrections than clean entries. A borough that never finds a food bank partner but stays on the map anyway. We publish the log so anyone, not just us, can check.