WINNER: Sarah Ramirez and the Great Fruit Rescue

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Fruit was in danger.

It was falling off trees, rotting. Not nourishing people in desperate need of healthy food.

So Sarah Ramirez, a health advocate in Tulare County, Calif., started a program to pick up unused fresh produce from yards and donate it to the food bank. It gets healthy fruits and veggies into the hands of locals who need them.

Now Ramirez won the Salud America! #SaludHeroes video voting contest!

Watch her winning video or read her story about how she took action after noticing poverty, hunger, and a lack of access to healthy food in her 60% Latino farming community where much freshly grown produce goes to waste.

Ramirez’s Be Healthy Tulare group researched and developed a volunteer program to glean fruit from local homes, and donated it the food bank, Foodlink.

The effort reinforced the food bank’s revamped nutrition policy, both reducing food waste and bringing more healthy food to the needy at the same time.

“If we can provide [FoodLink] with sources of extra, fresh produce to support that nutrition policy and we can do so in a way that is no cost to them, they can go use their money to purchase other produce,” Ramirez said. “It’s a good way of stretching the dollar.”

(Featured image via KVPR.org)