About Olivia Sanchez
Olivia Sanchez launched her career in solid waste and recycling field in 1999, working in the public sector. She has a tremendous opportunity to learn grant management and program implementation in areas of household hazard waste, solid waste and recycling planning/implementation, waste/recycling analysis, school gardening education, composting, marketing, outreach and education. As Sanchez furthered her career, she retained those skills and grew them to include franchise contract compliance, green building education, construction/demolition programs, landfill diversion programs, food rescue programming and legislative compliance.
The City of Riverside, along with partners, Riverside Food System Alliance and Riverside Food Co-op, was awarded a $200k grant from California's Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) for the Cycle 1 Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program. The Grant funds are used to pilot the Riverside Food Waste Prevention and Food Rescue Initiative over a 3-year period. The program provides tools and training for the community advocates to encourage food waste prevention and food rescue activities.
The Riverside Solid Waste: Food Rescue and Ambassador Certification Program offers a free 40 hour certificate program with hands on projects, field trips, workshops, and volunteer work in order to become more knowledgeable about food rescue and waste. This program strives to improve the overall community heath by neighborhood-led projects focused on actions to rescue food, encourage composting and recycling, and reducing food waste. In order to reach their mission, there are five workshops, Life Cycle of Food, Powering Healthy Soils with Food Waste Compost, Food Rescue and Waste Reduction, Composting Technology and Energy, and Community Challenges. Each workshop bridges the gap between food waste and technology incorporating easy at home strategies one can implement immediately to reduce food waste. The last class specifically ties in all aspects of food rescue and waste incorporating local community challenges pushing those who take the ambassador certification program to become leaders in their community and take the initiative to find change.
The last class specifically ties in all aspects of food rescue and waste incorporating local community challenges pushing those who take the ambassador certification program to become leaders in their community and take the initiative to find change.The Riverside Solid Waste: Food Rescue and Ambassador Certification Program furthermore plans to work with ChowMatch, an app which allows users to pick-up and donate food before becoming waste. ChowMatch interacts with local grocery stores or areas such as homeless shelters, and neighborhood feeding programs connecting each other to leftover food. Utilizing its resources and hiring 2 food waste coordinators, the ambassador program has rescued over 1.5 tons of food in a mere 6 months and is planning to expand its effort into local communities.