How one Watertown elementary student is helping to fight food insecurity

Most first graders are worried about whether there's Goldfish or Zbars in their lunchboxes. But J.R. Lowell Elementary School student Naomi Ward, of Watertown, was more concerned about students throwing away unopened food during the school day.

So, Ward, now 9, decided to start a pilot program at her school last year, with the help of her mom, to collect food from the kindergarten class to reduce food waste. Sealed packaged food and uneaten whole fruit are donated to the Watertown Community Fridge on Mount Auburn Street, which aims to help people in need of food assistance. Ward’s program successfully donated 400 pounds of food to the fridge in just three months.

" There were packets of apples, milk, cheese sticks," she said. "It made me feel like there was a problem, and there was a solution that was like right in front of me."

Since then, the program has expanded and Ward has raised money to add a community fridge in the cafeteria, too.

“ I felt really excited that it could really happen. And proud that I made something [to] help our communities,” she added.

The process involved coordination between the school, the local board of health and her state representative to make sure everything was legal and sustainable for the future. Ward said she hopes to expand the program to other Watertown schools. 

"I saw all the waste that kids were doing, some kids might be hungry and other kids might be full," she said.