How this 17-year-old built a youth food rescue network

Apollin Lu is only 17, but she is already leading a growing youth network that is helping tackle food waste across British Columbia. She founded the Food Recovery Alliance, which has mobilised more than 140 young volunteers who have saved 9,000 pounds of fresh produce from going to waste. Together, they collected surplus produce from local farms and redistributed it to shelters and community organisations. Lu was recognised with the 2026 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for her efforts to reduce food waste and help people in need.She saw food waste up closeApollin Lu grew up on her family’s garlic farm. She watched her father work the soil for a decade. Her neighbours also had farms, and she noticed a pattern. Lots of this fresh produce ended up going to waste. Farmers weren’t discarding vegetables out of negligence. They were managing supply chains that didn’t always align with demand. She started asking herself: why is good food going to waste while people in the community are starving? For the farmers, the wastage was part of the business, but for the underprivileged communities nearby, it was a lost meal.By the time she got into ninth grade, she knew she had to do something...