An Indiana school district has just come up with a great way to crack down on both food waste and student hunger by using wasted food to help feed needy students.

The Elkhart School District has been salvaging their wasted food so they can package it up for their students to take home on the weekend. School officials realized that students who depended on the free breakfasts and lunches that the schools provide had nothing to eat at home on the weekends. They also saw that lots of unused cafeteria food was going in the trash, so they took action.

The district enlisted the help of the food rescue group Cultivate to collect, package, and freeze all of their unused food from school lunches. Thanks to their efforts, 20 at-risk students from Woodland Elementary School will be given a backpack every Friday containing eight frozen meals for their weekend at home.

“At Elkhart Community Schools, we were wasting a lot of food,” explained Natalie Bickel, student services. “There wasn’t anything to do with the food. So they came to the school three times a week and rescued the food.”

“It’s making a big impact,” said Melissa Ramey from Chamber Leadership Academy. “I am proud of that. It was heartbreaking to hear that children go home on the weekends and that they don’t have anything to eat.”

“Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system,” added Jim Conklin of Cultivate. “You don’t always think of a school.”

Find out more about this amazing program in the video below!