Our speaker today was Alysala Malik, daughter of fellow Rushmore Rotarian April Malik and a 3rd year medical school student. She gave an incredible talk about her concern for the large amounts of commercial food waste versus the high numbers of food insecure people. In college she got involved with collecting excess food from dorms, stores, and restaurants to give to the food insecure. This led her to apply and receive a Watson Fellowship which allowed her to conduct independent exploration of this subject outside the U.S. for 1 year. In her year she visited France, India, Nepal and spent 3 months in Madagascar. She lived among the food insecure and worked with groups trying to help. She was able to see different solutions and a need for long term solutions by meeting and talking with the local people to find out the whys. Infrastructure, education in farming and clean water were often the long term solutions.
Thank you for such a great topic and impactful talk.