Apollin Lu is only 17, but she is already leading a growing youth network that is helping tackle food waste across British Columbia. She founded the Food Recovery Alliance, which has mobilised more than 140 young volunteers who have saved 9,000 pounds of fresh produce from going to waste. Together, they collected surplus produce from local farms and redistributed it to shelters and community organisations. Lu was recognised with the 2026 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for her efforts to reduce food waste and help people in need.
She saw food waste up close
Apollin Lu grew up on her family’s garlic farm. She watched her father work the soil for a decade. Her neighbours also had farms, and she noticed a pattern. Lots of this fresh produce ended up going to waste. Farmers weren’t discarding vegetables out of negligence. They were managing supply chains that didn’t always align with demand. She started asking herself: why is good food going to waste while people in the community are starving? For the farmers, the wastage was part of the business, but for the underprivileged communities nearby, it was a lost meal.By the time she got into ninth grade, she knew she had to do something. So she formed the Food Recovery Alliance to address that discrepancy. The work began quietly. Lu spent two years doing exactly what most non-profit founders do at the start: cold-calling farmers, building trust with storefront managers and convincing her peers that weekend farm work sounded fun. Eventually, the farmers joined her programme. By now, her team had built an invoicing app so that farmers receive a tax receipt the moment food is donated. Along with her volunteers, she also put together a community garden where younger students grow fresh produce and donate it, while also learning sustainable farming. By the time the organisation was formally incorporated under the BC Societies Act in February 2025, it had already collected 7,272 pounds of produce valued at over $25,210. “This year we really started to get a lot of youth interest in our organisation, which I think will help us sustain long term,” Lu told Victoria News.Over the past three years, Lu has collected 9,000 pounds of locally grown crops, valued at more than $32,000, from farmers across Greater Victoria and Vancouver, and donated them rather than allowing them to end up as waste.
From farms to families
Food Recovery Alliance fills a crucial gap. Every year, farms yield more than they can market. Retailers and wholesalers pass on imperfect or surplus stock. So the organisation partners with Mustard Seed to collect and redistribute this excess produce to people in need. The organisation processes more than 10,000 pounds of rescued food each week from 30-plus donors, reaching roughly 70,000 food-insecure people across the region.Food Recovery Alliance slots directly into that gap. Volunteers show up at farms during harvest season and gather what would otherwise go unharvested or unsold. They coordinate delivery to non-profits, which then redistribute it. Though the scale is smaller than retail partnerships, the impact is direct and the relationships more human.“It’s hard for a lot of farmers to trust someone they don’t know to come on their farm. We really want to partner with Rise Up and other organisations, to spread the word and build legitimacy,” Lu told the outlet. After building legitimacy, the organisation is now piloting partnerships with organisations such as Rise Up, aiming to expand its credibility as it grows its Vancouver network.
Recognition and award
Apollin Lu is now a Grade 11 student at St. Michaels University School (SMUS) in Saanich. She grabbed national attention after winning the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which annually recognises 25 young leaders aged 8 to 18 whose service work demonstrates a public impact. She is among the 2026 winners and a top-tier recipient of a $10,000 award. For Lu, the recognition validates what she already knows from the work itself: that youth-led initiatives can scale.
