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Founder’s Message

Helen verDuin Palit
 Founder and President of the Board of Directors

Since arriving at New Haven, Connecticut in 1980, Helen Palit has been in the business of connecting those with good food with those who are hungry for it. Her career was born in the Community Soup Kitchen and developed into the New Haven Food Salvage Project she ran for Yale University, and grew to maturity in New York City where she founded City Harvest and nurtured it into a much beloved Manhattan institution.


Created to meet a need, City Harvest was the first major harvest program to pick up good un-served perishable food (hot, cold or frozen) from restaurants, caterers, corporate cafeterias and events to deliver it immediately, and for free, to nearby social service agencies feeding New York’s hungry. One million meals collected in the first year with the volunteers set the tone and the game plan.

Helen recalls “We never thought, that we could give food once, and call it a “success.” That is one reason, that we design real business solutions to link abundance to need.”

The lessons learned in the years she spent growing City Harvest have become the foundation for over 1,103 Harvest programs in America and around the world. The basic principles never change: “Our programs are deliberately simple. This makes it possible to tailor the program to each local community. Because each program is by and for the community, the successes are garnered with the local civic and corporate support too.”

Since the very beginning, Helen’s keen sense for process and numbers enabled her to engage corporate America at the highest levels. Her partnership with American Express’ Chairman James Robinson III, PaineWebber’s Chairman Donald Marron, and United Auto President Group’s Roger Penske Jr. demonstrated how even America’s biggest corporations could make a meaningful contribution on a local level.

As the media reported the successes and simplicity of the Harvest concept, inspired people wanted to know how they could create a Harvest program in their own cities. They contacted Helen asking for assistance to create, establish and effectively provide long-term management of their own Harvest program so they did not have to re-invent the wheel.

In 1989, Helen was tapped by President George H. W. Bush as the Fourth Point Of Light in his Thousand Points Of Light for Community Service. At the award ceremony, the President gave Helen the mandate to “replicate any successful nonprofit to any city that needed this unique service”.

Today, there are 122 Harvest programs in the United States, and another 675 around the world using her model of social entrepreneurship in sharing the abundance. Each program is an independent program with its own board of directors, food and fund raising efforts to complement the ethos of their own community.

Helen likes to put their accomplishments in first person terms. I enjoy stimulating people. I challenge them by telling them that while you finish your dinner tonight, the Harvest programs will pick up enough food for one million meals today for the hungry men, women and children around the world The amazing part is that this is accomplished at absolutely no cost to either the food donors, or the social service agencies who serve the food. Three billion meals and counting since 1980… the best food in each city that would otherwise go to waste…

In 1995 concerned members of the Entertainment Industry asked Helen to help start Angel Harvest in Los Angeles; to take advantage of the unserved meals from large catering operations, studio events and premieres, and award ceremonies like the Oscars® and Emmys®. Helen quickly expanded this list of food donors to include corporations and local community groups, schools, synagogues, photographers and wholesalers to include all diverse sectors of Los Angeles to help feed those in need right down the street.

Her current focus is to continue to broaden Angel Harvest’s leadership team and broaden its community base. At the same time she is working on a book chronically the evolution of the new industry that she created while continuing the work of America Harvest: creating unique solutions while matching diverse unmet needs smartly and simply as an “all win” situation.

Says Palit, “The most exciting part of my job is empowering individuals of all walks of life to develop to their own potentials, then seeing their community ‘harvest’ the incredible results. That is the greatest reward ever.”