Founder of Enterprise Linking Fresh Produce with Food Pantries Speaking in Bryn Mawr

Bryn Mawr, PA – February 1, 2015 – Gary Oppenheimer, the founder of AmpleHarvest.org, a national initiative to help gardeners donate excess garden produce to neighborhood food pantries, will be giving a lecture on Monday, March 2, the second event in Harcum College’s Centennial Lectures Series. The presentation will be held at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Avenue, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

He will be discussing both the problems of food waste and hunger in America and the technology based AmpleHarvest.org solution. He will also explore the challenges faced by innovative solutions in the non-profit realm. A Q&A will follow.

Aware of the increasing hunger problem in America as well as the staggering amount of wasted food in gardens around the country, Oppenheimer created AmpleHarvest.org enabling America’s 42 million home gardeners who grow food to be able to easily find a local food pantry eager for their excess garden bounty.

“AmpleHarvest.org [reduces] the waste of food, especially garden produce, it helps the environment, reduces the costs of feeding programs, reduces the long term health care costs of the country, and it builds bridges between the people in the community and the food pantries in the community,” Oppenheimer said. “It helps people get fed.”

Since founding AmpleHarvest.org, Oppenheimer has been named a CNN Hero, became a TED and Google Talk speaker, and designated as a Points of Light honoree and Huffington Post Game Changer 2011.

He has appeared in numerous radio and TV interviews, has spoken at Wharton’s Social Responsibility Conference, the Food Conference at UC Davis, The World Food Prize, and many others. He has also presented AmpleHarvest.org to USDA People’s Garden Initiative Conference in Washington DC, hosted a webinar for 100,000 invited USDA employees on gardening and hunger, and has been interviewed numerous times by print and electronic media nationwide. AmpleHarvest.org works closely with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative to improve fresh food access at thousands of food pantries nationwide.

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Note to Editor: Interviews with Mr. Oppenheimer can be arranged.

About Harcum College
Harcum College, one of Pennsylvania’s first independent, two-year colleges, was founded in Bryn Mawr, PA in 1915 and was the first college in Pennsylvania chartered by the state to grant associate degrees. Harcum offers fully accredited, career-ready majors in nursing, the allied health professions, business and social sciences on campus, online, and regionally, as well as lifelong learning programs and corporate training. It will celebrate a year-long 100th anniversary beginning in January of 2015.