WORKING TOGETHER TO BRING FRESH FOOD TO OUR NEIGHBORS

Glean Milwaukee works to make healthier food more accessible to our community, and you can help to by…

–Registering your fruit trees to become the trees we harvest

–Volunteering your time to become a harvester or supporter of our work

–Learning more about how to care for and produce fruit trees and produce

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Created by a local Milwaukee resident in 2013, Glean Milwaukee began gleaning, or collecting produce that would have been otherwise overlooked, and giving it to our community. Organized by Groundwork Milwaukee, Glean Milwaukee works with volunteers to help residents harvest their produce in a mindful manner.

Glean Milwaukee is made possible by the help of the Milwaukee residents, with many moving parts, such as the fruit pickers, the drivers, and our board. During the harvest season the Glean Milwaukee team sends out volunteers to registered homes and farms to collect the produce. Once the produce is collected it is distributed to food pantries within Milwaukee. Currently we are working with Riverwest Food Pantry, New Beginnings are Possible, Tandem, Tikkun Ha-ir to help stock their food pantries with healthy and sustainable options.

The mission of Glean Milwaukee is to make healthy eating more accessible and maintainable to those in need within our community. With “21% of Milwaukee residents living more than 1 mile away from a grocery store”, or in other words a food desert, it is very hard and unreliable for Milwaukee residents in these situations to live a healthy life. With the work of our dedicated team of volunteers, along with the work of our community members, Glean Milwaukee works to facilitate a healthy relationship between trees and the owners.

Food recovery is one creative way to help reduce hunger in America. It supplements federal food assistance programs by making better use of a food source that already exists…”

“A Citizen’s Guide to Food Recovery,” USDA, April 1997

FAQs

Why harvest fruit?

Who receives the fruit?

People on every state and continent are joining the gleaning movement! Check out this gleaning video from Florida.