Voting for the Innovation Award
will be open September 9-11.
The GFN Excellence and Innovation in Food Banking Awards to highlight and celebrate exceptional programs and partnerships from throughout the Network. Learn more about the three award categories, finalists, and selection committee.
The Innovation Award winner will be decided by a vote at the GFN Global Summit. Meet the Innovation Award Finalists below and vote for your favorite project to win. Award winners in all categories will be announced at the Summit closing session on Thursday, September 12th.
Voting will be open to Summit attendees between September 9-11 at 5 p.m. AEST. Vote here.
The Food Banking Kenya (FBK) solar dehydrator program utilizes an innovative approach to address hunger and food loss by harnessing renewable solar energy. Unlike traditional drying methods that rely on fossil fuels or electricity, the solar dehydrator collects solar energy to warm air and efficiently dehydrate food.
This method reduces moisture content, extending shelf life while preserving nutritional value. The closed system design ensures higher quality and hygienic produce, safeguarding against contamination, rain, and dust. In rural areas, farmers often must sell produce immediately after harvest at low prices due to a lack of drying facilities. The solar dehydrator mitigates this issue by allowing farmers and Food Banking Kenya to dry their produce, thus preventing monetary losses.
This innovative approach not only conserves energy but also provides a sustainable and cost-effective solution for farmers and communities.
In collaboration with livestock breeders in Tandil, Argentina and private companies in the Agroindustrial Chamber of Tandil, Fundacion Banco de Alimentos Tandil rescues and produces ground meat for its community partners.
The Tandil Agroindustrial Chamber provides trained individuals to find livestock breeders with animals that lack commercial value due in the market due to their low productivity, called preserve cattle.
Through donated services, the cattle are processed into ground beef. Ultimately, frozen ground beef is delivered to the food bank, divided into 3 and 5 kilogram packages, which are delivered to different community organizations in the region.
India produces 277 million tonnes of solid waste every year, which is likely to reach 387 million tonnes in 2030 based on World Bank data. Landfills are overflowing in urban cities, increasing the waste management cost and pollution of air, water, land, and spread of diseases.
No Food Waste India’s Rganix Dehydra program aims to enable proper handling, processing, and conversation of food waste into a biomass and liquid fertilizer therefore reducing the dumping of food and other organize waste.
Rise Against Hunger Philippines’ FARM Food and Agricultural Recovery Mobilization for Sustainable Consumption and Production program aims to reduce post-harvest losses while improving nutrition and food security.
The food bank allows farmers in Nueva Vizcaya to barter their unsold fresh produce, that otherwise would have been thrown away, in exchange for essential food and household items. The donated produce is then distributed among 10 surrounding elementary schools to support the nutrition of students and their families.
Since its launch, more than 5,000 children from the ten schools in Nueva Vizcaya have been served with fresh and nutritious produce and disposable incomes have also been improved for 50 participating farmers, with the program targeting at least 120,000 kilograms of produce recovered monthly.
The Scholar of Sustenance Foundation (SOS) Food Warrior Application (FWA) is a data collection tool designed to support the SOS Food Rescue Ambassadors (FRAs) in gathering data related to its food rescue initiative, logistics, and community. Promoting continuous operational improvement and aiding in food distribution efforts is a key component of the SOS Food Rescue Program (FRP), which operates seven days a week. The FWA has been operational in Thailand for three years and is currently in phase one of implementation in the Philippines and will be launched in Indonesia in Q4 2024.
The FWA’s main function is to collect data throughout all stages of the FRP. This includes truck management to track utilization, recording donor food weight and type during the rescue process, documenting food recipients in communities, and finally, submitting all gathered data into the system which is then shared with food and grant donors through regular reports.
A byproduct of the application is the raw data that FRAs provide, which streamlines the back-end tracking work, increases food rescue capacity, and reduces paper usage and the potential for collection errors. Additionally, the data obtained via the system is crucial, because the raw data is used to analyze internal logistics.
Voting is open to GFN Global Summit 2024 attendees. Please only vote once. Voting opens on Monday, September 9th and closes Wednesday, September 11th at 5 pm AEST.
Voting is now closed. The winner will be announced at the GFN Global Summit on Thursday, September 12th.
