More than 42 million people go to bed hungry in America. To Jasmine Crowe, that's just baffling.
"Some of my friends, people that are close to me, didn’t have food," Crowe says.
As someone who cooks food for a living, she knew she had to do something to help shrink that number.
Crowe explaining the reason behind her mission to help solve food waste and hunger. All photos via State Farm.
She started by hosting pop-up dinners for people who are food insecure. But these weren't just ordinary dinners.
Along with her volunteers, she served three-course to five-course meals, similar to what you'd find at a nice restaurant. They even created menus for people to order from to round out the dining experience.
The goal was to remove each person's food worries for a night and help them just focus on the positives.
However, as the endeavor grew, it started to become expensive to sustain.
"Me and my best friend who’s also a chef, we would make these menus based off of what was on sale at the grocery stores," Crowe says.
Crowe with a fellow chef and volunteer.
That's when she had her epiphany — why not try to solve the hunger crisis with the food waste crisis?
"We waste 72 billion pounds of perfectly good food every year in this country," Crowe says. She couldn't think of a better scenario than one in which one problem could actually solve the other.
Crowe created a sustainable waste management app called Goodr, which "redirects surplus food from restaurants, event centers, airports, and businesses to the millions of people who are food insecure."
Waste not want not, right?
If food suppliers have leftover food that they're just going to throw away, all they have to do is put out an alert through Goodr, and someone will pick it up and take it to organizations that feed the hungry.
For Ryan Whitten, executive chef at Turner Broadcasting, the importance of Goodr's mission hit him around the holidays.
It was perfect timing because, according to Crowe, that's when hunger tends to spike.
Crowe with Whitten.
It ended up being a wonderful experience for everyone involved.
Not only do businesses earn valuable tax deductions for their donations, they can actually see the good it's doing people in real time.
"She would literally take our food and about 20 to 30 minutes later, I would get a picture back with this is where it’s going to, these are the people it’s helping," Whitten recalls.
Thanks to partnerships with large suppliers, Goodr's been able to serve 80,000 meals, including over 2,000 special holiday meals, to people around the country since 2013.
But Crowe's work isn't just helping food insecure people. It's inspiring people of all ages to do more for the less fortunate.
For example, every holiday they do an initiative called Kids Give Back, which offers the younger generation an opportunity to volunteer as servers for pop-up dinners.
A volunteer in the Kids Give Back program.
What's more, the kids who go through it seem to genuinely appreciate the experience.
"I think when we put them in a position where they’re actually serving, it changes their lives more than they know," Crowe says.
Goodr is also inspiring volunteers to get out and start charitable organizations of their own.
"I can’t tell you how many people have started volunteering with us, and then said, 'Hey Jasmine, I love doing this so much, now I’m starting a nonprofit organization,'" Crowe says.
It's going to take more than one organization to solve issues like hunger and food waste, but thanks to Crowe's inspiring work, a serious dent's been made.
Volunteers at a Goodr pop-up dinner.
When you do something meaningful to help others, it creates a ripple effect. Crowe has seen this effect firsthand and has made it part of her mission to keep moving the needle forward.
"Giving creates a cycle of love," explains Crowe. "Everyone benefits. When everyone’s doing something to help someone else, no one loses."
Watch Crowe's whole story here:
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A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
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Woman gives toddler a bath Canva


An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.