Food Rescue Volunteers Kenya – From Surplus to Nutrition is a community volunteer initiative led by Inua Damsite CBO that mobilizes young people, women, farmers and community volunteers to prevent edible agricultural produce from becoming waste and redirect its value toward nutrition and livelihoods.

In farming communities such as Nyandarua, periods of high production can leave farmers with vegetables, fruits and other produce that cannot find a market because of oversupply, cosmetic rejection, inadequate storage and limited access to processing. Post-harvest losses can reach up to 40%. At the same time, vulnerable households, including low-income and displaced communities, struggle to access affordable nutritious food.

The project creates a volunteer-powered bridge between this surplus and need.

Volunteers work alongside farmers and Inua Damsite CBO to identify recoverable surplus produce, mobilize farming communities, coordinate collection and aggregation, sort and grade produce, and participate in food-rescue activities. At our community agro-processing hub, volunteers support processing and food-safety activities that transform suitable produce into longer-lasting products such as dried foods, purees and composite flours. The existing hub uses drying, juicing and blending technologies, with renewable energy incorporated into the processing model.

Volunteers also support community nutrition awareness, food-waste education and last-mile distribution activities. Women and young people interested in enterprise receive practical exposure to agro-processing, entrepreneurship and food safety, while the project's pay-as-you-use model provides a pathway for participants to progress from volunteering and training into income-generating agro-processing activities.

This approach builds on Inua Damsite CBO's existing community work. The organization reports reaching 180,000+ farmers, training 850+ women in agro-processing, supporting 131+ active agro-processors and improving access to nutritious food for 250,000+ families. In 2025, the project also supplied ready-to-use therapeutic food to 1,385 families in Kakuma.

Through the new volunteer project, we will systematically measure number of volunteers engaged, volunteer hours contributed, kilograms of food recovered, farmers supported, community activities conducted and families reached.

Our vision is to build a movement in which communities become active participants in solving food loss and hunger:

Rescue food. Empower communities. Nourish families. Protect our environment.

The goal of is to build a community-led volunteer movement that reduces post-harvest food loss by connecting surplus farm produce with local processing, value addition and nutrition support for vulnerable communities.The project seeks to transform volunteering into a practical mechanism for strengthening local food systems. Volunteers will work with smallholder farmers to identify and recover edible surplus produce, support aggregation and sorting, participate in food-processing and food-safety activities, promote awareness on food waste and nutrition, and support distribution of nutritious products to communities experiencing food insecurity.Through the project, Inua Damsite CBO aims to demonstrate that food loss, hunger, unemployment and environmental degradation can be addressed together through organized community action. Instead of allowing edible produce to be discarded during periods of oversupply, the project will mobilize volunteers to help move this food through a circular pathway:Farm surplus → Food recovery → Local processing → Nutritious products → Vulnerable familiesThe project also aims to create a pathway for young people and women to progress from volunteering into skills development, entrepreneurship and sustainable livelihoods. Volunteers will gain practical experience in community mobilization, agro-processing, food safety, environmental action, nutrition awareness and social entrepreneurship.In the longer term, our goal is to establish a replicable volunteer-led food rescue model that can be adopted by communities beyond Nyandarua, creating a network of local volunteers who see surplus food not as waste, but as a resource capable of generating nutrition, livelihoods and climate resilience.The project will measure progress through the number of volunteers engaged, volunteer hours contributed, kilograms of edible food recovered, farmers supported, food-rescue activities conducted and vulnerable families reached.This goal builds directly on Inua Damsite CBO's existing model of recovering surplus produce, processing it locally and connecting the resulting nutritious foods with underserved communities.

The project will create measurable environmental, social and economic results by organizing volunteers around food recovery, community agro-processing and nutrition.

1. Reduced food loss and increased food recovery
Volunteers will help identify, collect, sort and redirect edible surplus fruits, vegetables and other farm produce that might otherwise be discarded during periods of oversupply. Recovered produce will be sold fresh where possible or transformed into shelf-stable products such as dried foods, purees and composite flours.

2. Stronger volunteer participation in local food systems
The project will establish an organized community volunteer network with clearly defined roles in farmer mobilization, food recovery, sorting and grading, environmental awareness, processing support and community nutrition activities. We will record the number of active volunteers and volunteer hours contributed, creating measurable evidence of community participation.

3. Increased support for smallholder farmers
Farmers will gain an additional pathway for surplus and cosmetically rejected produce. Volunteers will support farmer outreach, aggregation and connections to the processing hub, helping reduce the economic losses associated with unsold harvests.

4. Skills and livelihood opportunities for women and youth
Volunteers will gain practical experience in agro-processing, food safety, entrepreneurship, community mobilization and environmental action. Interested participants will be connected to Inua Damsite CBO's training and pay-as-you-use processing model, creating a pathway from volunteering → skills → enterprise → income. The existing model has already trained 850+ women, with 131+ becoming active agro-processors.

5. Improved access to nutritious food
Recovered produce will contribute to nutritious products for low-income and food-insecure communities. This builds on Inua Damsite CBO's existing food-access work, which reports reaching more than 250,000 families, including 1,385 families in Kakuma with RUTF in 2025.

6. Greater environmental awareness and climate action
Community campaigns will encourage farmers, volunteers and households to view edible surplus as a resource rather than waste and promote food recovery, responsible consumption and circular-economy practices.

Project results will be tracked through volunteers engaged, volunteer hours, kilograms of food recovered, farmers supported, women and youth trained, processing activities completed, community awareness activities conducted and families reached.

Our ultimate result: less food wasted, stronger farmer livelihoods, empowered volunteers and more nutritious food reaching communities that need it.