Evelyn Perez decided to do some good Saturday, and, at the same time, teach her children the value of helping others. So the east Orange County woman, her two older daughters and other family members became citrus pickers for the morning as part of a two-county effort to feed the needy. Along with nearly 200 other volunteers, they picked unwanted oranges and grapefruit in groves and backyards that otherwise would have rotted or ended up in a landfill.

The fruit will be donated to food banks, which will pass them on to homeless shelters and soup kitchens. "It seemed like a great way for us to help the community and do our share for future generations, and a good way to teach the kids," said Perez, 32.
The Society of St. Andrew, a nonprofit hunger-relief organization, organized the sixth annual Orlando-area Citrus Harvest for the Hungry. The Virginia-based group collected 50,000 pounds of fruit that will feed 150,000 hungry people, Florida director Barbara Sayles said.

The charity salvaged 1.1 million pounds of produce in Florida last year, she said, and about 30 million pounds nationwide. Much is discarded because it is not perfect in color, shape or size, and finicky American consumers won't buy it. Saturday's effort was part of the society's Gleaning Network, which uses the biblical practice of gleaning, collecting fruit and vegetables left behind after a harvest. The biblical book of Leviticus commands that gleanings be left for the poor and "the stranger."


Also on the menu

Depending on the time of year, the society gleans cabbage, corn, cucumbers, onions, squash and eggplant. One gleaning targeted organic mangoes, which were shipped to Immokalee, home to many farmworkers. Schools, Scout troops and local business volunteers are among those who help salvage the produce. "It's fun," agreed Perez's daughters Yali, 12, and Shaylie, 6. Among Saturday's volunteers were four students from Rollins College in Winter Park who ignored a chilly mist as they used a hook on a long stick to pick fruit in the backyard of a Colonialtown home in Orlando. Dee Boone, 29, who moved to the house in December, said she can eat only a few grapefruit and didn't want the rest from her tree to go to waste. "I just thought it was a cool program to feed the homeless," Boone said, cradling her 15-day-old baby, Maya, in her arms.


Four drop-off spots

College Park Presbyterian Church was one of four locations in Orange and Seminole counties where residents could drop off fruit. Dawn Morris and Jan Cooper and their sons, Sam Morris and Eddie Cooper, picked 930 grapefruit in 2 1/2 hours and delivered them to volunteers at the church. The College Park boys, best friends and seventh-graders at Lee Middle School in Orlando, will get community-service credit for their efforts. But the morning was about more than that: The work was a good way to spend family time and for everyone to learn the value of charity.

"It's not all about us," said Sam, 13, a student in the school's International Baccalaureate program. "There are people less fortunate. We can go to the supermarket and buy grapefruit. They can't." The society's aim is to provide nutritious food to poor people who eat a lot of processed products. It costs just a nickel per pound to salvage the produce, including administration, fundraising, containers and shipping, Sayles said.

Founded in 1979, the society took its name from the apostle Andrew, who brought a boy with five barley loaves and two fish to Jesus, who the New Testament says multiplied the food to feed 5,000 people. Citrus is the largest gleaning crop in Florida. But the national society also operates the Potato Project, which salvages commercially unmarketable potatoes and other donated produce, and Harvest of Hope, a program designed to educate people about hunger and involve them in a solution.

96 billion


Pounds of food wasted per year in the United States -- 3,044 pounds per second

49 million

People who could be fed annually by food wasted at the retail, consumer and food-service levels in U.S.

6 million

Children who die every year worldwide because of hunger and malnutrition

36 million