Kenya

Republic of Kenya

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.

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