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Welcome
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About Us
Rolling Harvest Food Rescue collects donated produce from local farms and markets, and distributes immediately to the non-profit hunger-relief agencies helping the most needy families in the community.
The face of hunger in our area is changing. So many among us are underemployed, recently laid off, disabled, struggling with home foreclosures or even homelessness, or working two jobs to try to make ends meet. Nutritious food is unfortunately more expensive and is often the first area that people are forced to make budget cuts. Rolling Harvest Food Rescue is committed to helping our partner sites provide better and healthier food choices for these families.
Our sites include food pantries, domestic violence shelters, senior centers, homeless shelters and at-risk low-income adults with health challenges. 32% of the people we help are children; 12% are seniors. In addition to the daily pick-up and delivery schedules, we also hold our weekly free "farmers' markets” at some of the sites to educate the recipients about nutrition, cooking and using the donated produce to their best benefit with no waste.
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Since 2009, we have been focused on partnering with local farmers, making it easy for them to share their freshest, healthy produce with the at-risk communities in which they live. Now that the 2014 Harvest season has finished, with even more local farmers and food producers on board, we look back on another year of tremendous growth and significant increases. This has enabled Rolling Harvest to distribute more than 386,000 pounds of locally-grown fruits and vegetables, high-quality organic meats and a higher percentage of organic produce to date. This represents an increase of more than 143% over last year!!! That's more than 1.8 million additional servings of super-healthy food on the plates of thousands of the families we are helping!! We continue to increase our harvesting (gleaning) programs and special collaborative projects with local social service and hunger-relief agencies as well. We now have a growing team of more than 70 dedicated volunteers and 25 farms who all work together to keep a reliable source of fruits and vegetables and healthy protein for more than 14,000 families each month throughout the growing season from May through December.
Turning food pantries into farmers markets remains the goal. With your continued help and support, we look forward to providing even more and impacting more lives for 2015 and beyond.
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Our Founder
Founder and Executive Director Cathy Snyder was a native Philadelphian working in broadcast sales when she left to live overseas with her family, first in Tokyo, then on to Amsterdam, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and Louisville until finally coming back home and settling a few years ago in the New Hope, PA area.
 While always active in local community service wherever she lived, Cathy found herself volunteering at a food pantry in Lambertville, NJ, helping out with the day-to-day operations and interacting with the local, food-insecure and needy population of this otherwise affluent and prosperous tourist area.
This began a personal mission to provide a more balanced, more nutritious choice of foods being distributed to the pantry visitors. Cathy had won a huge, red Ford Excursion SUV at Churchill Downs Racetrack in Kentucky, and started using that truck to go to farm markets and grocers, asking for donations of fresh produce, a commodity in short supply at the food pantry. Years later, she has now branched out to full-time procurement of the freshest, healthiest, locally-grown food. The red Ford has been replaced by two beautiful donated Rolling Harvest Food Rescue delivery vehicles and is just part of the tremendous generosity and support of our local communities!
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Mission Statement
Our goal is to increase access to donated fresh produce and other healthy foods to area hunger-relief sites that serve the at-risk, food-insecure population by providing local farmers and food producers with free, effective delivery and distribution.
The specific objectives and purposes of this corporation shall be:
- to increase donation of and access to locally-grown produce and other healthy foods for the at-risk, low-income population;
- to provide free-of-charge delivery and distribution of donated fresh produce directly from local farms and markets to participating sites who serve the at-risk, food-insecure population, including food pantries, soup kitchens, domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters and low-income senior housing;
- to provide a “Free Farm Market” on-site to clients of food pantries, shelters and senior housing for purposes of nutritional advice and education;
- to provide a free–of–charge quick-response gleaning team to participating farmers;
- to encourage healthy, locally-grown food donations by working with farmers and growers to simplify the donation process;
- to develop new sources of donated foods by reaching out to community business leaders, farmers and corporations
- to engage in other activities related to increasing awareness and educating the public concerning hunger in our neighborhoods;
- to collaborate and partner with other non-profit , social service and hunger-relief organizations in the region to increase the impact of our mutual goal to alleviate hunger.
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Good Samaritan Act
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act was enacted to "encourage the donation of food and grocery products to nonprofit organizations for distribution to needy individuals." The Act precludes civil and criminal liability arising from food donated in good faith, except in cases of gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
The Act provides:
LIABILITY OF PERSON OR GLEANER. - A person or gleaner shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the person or gleaner donates in good faith to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals.
LIABILITY OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. - A nonprofit organization shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the nonprofit organization received as a donation in good faith from a person or gleaner for ultimate distribution to needy individuals.
EXCEPTION. - Paragraphs (1) and (2) shall not apply to an injury to or death of an ultimate user or recipient of the food or grocery product that results from an act or omission of the person, gleaner, or nonprofit organization, as applicable, constituting gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
GROSS NEGLIGENCE. - The term 'gross negligence' means voluntary and conscious conduct (including a failure to act) by a person who, at the time of the conduct, knew that the conduct was likely to be harmful to the health or well-being of another person.
The Act defines a "gleaner" as "a person who harvests for free distribution to the needy, or for donation to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to the needy, an agricultural crop that has been donated by the owner."
The Act is intended to establish a minimum level of immunity for those engaged in food donation and distribution. State "good samaritan" statutes concerning the donation of food to the needy that provide less liability protection than the Act are considered preempted. However, state “good samaritan” statutes can provide greater liability protection if they so choose.
For example, New Jersey’s “Food Bank Good Samaritan Act” contains the same protections that a donor or food bank enjoys under the Act, however, the New Jersey Act provides greater protections to an “owner of agricultural food.” There, such owners can not be liable for “damages in any civil action or subject to criminal prosecution resulting from the consumption of the food gleaned or donated.” The Act only provides such liability protection so long as the damages are not caused by gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
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