World Wildlife Fund's Food Waste Warrior program provides grants (and stipends), toolkits, and lesson plans to empower K-12 school teachers and administrators to engage their students and take action on the issue of food waste. 

Food waste is an issue teachers and students confront every day, and with the incredible demands already placed on teachers, this program seeks to both compensate teachers and equip them with flexible and fully customizable resources to turn cafeterias into classrooms—helping students to conduct food waste audits in their cafeterias, advocate on the issue of food waste, and identify creative ways to reduce it.

The new grant application cycle opens on June 1st and will close on July 20th. All applicants in any U.S. state or territory are eligible to apply for this year's grant cycle—though applicants working with schools or districts located in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, and Washington D.C. will be prioritized to support current WWF food waste policy objectives. For more details and to apply, please visit our website https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/bring-food-waste-warriors-to-your-school. 

An estimated 30-40% of food is wasted in America, while more than 41 million Americans face hunger, including nearly 13 million children. At the same time, wasting food wastes water, energy, and wildlife habitat. We started this program because schools, which serve more than 4 billion lunches per year in the US, can turn cafeterias into classrooms and measure the scale of the issue as part of a learning experience.

More information about the food waste educator toolkits can be found at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/teaching-resources/toolkits/be-a-food-waste-warrior.

Any further questions about the program can be sent to fwwstaff@googlegroups.com.