Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Jiya Patel. Read her story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.
Jiya Patel, a 17-year-old rising senior, is deeply invested in her high school. She plays on the school golf team and serves on the Honor Council. She plans events like prom and pep rallies with the Student Live Committee. But her care for the people around her extends far beyond her fellow students.
Jiya initially delved into volunteering through her local temple, serving food to guests and helping out with gardening, cleaning, and other tasks. It was a visit to her parents’ homeland, however, that inspired her biggest initiative yet. In 2023, Jiya co-founded Thrive2Gethr to reduce food waste while fighting food insecurity. By redistributing excess food from restaurants and bakeries to shelters and food banks, clients can access delicious meals that would otherwise be thrown out.
Quickly expanding, the organization now has around 1,200 members in 40 student-led chapters across the country. Together, they’ve facilitated the donation of over $100,000 worth of food. Jiya is not only changing the culture around food waste. She’s creating the framework for other student leaders to do the same in their own communities. And when she soon joins her brother as the first generation of her family to go to college, her out-of-the-box thinking will make her an excellent fit for the business or economics career she plans to pursue.
What inspired you to get started with this initiative?
A couple of years ago, I went to India with my parents and saw a lot of families without food and necessary resources. It stuck with me, and I started thinking a lot about hunger. It’s a big problem in the U.S., too. As is food waste.
I saw videos online about dumpsters of perfectly good food being thrown away. Then, I realized that food waste and people facing food insecurity could be connected to address both problems. The food already existed; it just wasn’t getting to people who needed it. That inspired me to start my own organization.
Tell us about your volunteer role with Thrive2Gethr.
In the beginning, I was reaching out to all the local restaurants myself, building the program in my community. I would make a list of 100 businesses and struggle to find any partners. Many would just say no, right off the bat. But I’d keep following up with the ones that were leaning towards maybe. I was also organizing volunteers to pick and deliver food to shelters.
As it’s grown, I’ve focused more on helping other people get started. I recruit and mentor student chapter leaders, helping them connect with restaurants. I create guides and materials to guide them through the process. And I support them with any questions they have. Overall, I spend about 30 hours a month volunteering.
Jiya picks up donations from a local restaurant partner.
What are your long-term plans or goals for the organization?
I want to keep expanding, but I want to ensure each of our chapters is still getting the support they need. We need a balance between building and maintaining what we already have.
I also want to normalize restaurants donating food. I think a big part of why they’re hesitant is because they don’t want to be held liable if someone gets sick. But there’s a national law called the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996, which protects people donating food in good faith.
We give all the restaurants we ask to donate a guide, and that information is included. We speak about it as well, but I think there’s still a lack of understanding. I’d like to build awareness, so people are more willing to donate.
What’s been the most rewarding part of your work?
Giving so much food to people who need it has been rewarding to see. Depending on the location, we either donate to a facility for them to distribute to people, or we go in and give it directly to people. I’ve also enjoyed watching students help people in their communities and be invested in it the same way I am.
What have you learned through your experiences as a volunteer?
It’s a lot easier to make change when you work together. When I partner with people from my school, restaurants, and shelters, everyone’s working together towards the same goal. And everyone’s benefiting. I’ve learned a lot about teamwork.
I’ve also learned about persistence, because you have to keep going, even though many people are saying no. You have to push forward and hope that someone will end up saying yes. I don’t let things stop me when it gets hard.
Why is it important for others to get involved with causes they care about?
Everyone has to do their part to help. If you’re able to, you should at least try. It doesn’t have to be big. A lot of people feel like they need to have a lot of experience or do something large-scale for it to matter, but everything starts with one person making a decision to act.
If you care about something and you work at it, even something small can create a big ripple effect. You never know who you’ll inspire. If someone sees you doing good, that might make them want to do something good as well.
How can people take steps to address food insecurity and food waste in their own areas?
They can always start a chapter or reach out on any of our social media. They can also reach out to local restaurants. Many will say no, but one or at least one will say yes if you persist. You’ll find someone who’s willing to help. Just start small and build.
What do you want people to learn from your story?
You don’t have to be a full-grown adult to start making change. If you care about something, just start, and everything will work itself out. You can’t wait for everything to align. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect; you just have to try. The hardest part is taking that first step.
Tech Executive Leads Nonprofit Feeding Thousands in India
Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Alwyn Joseph. Read his story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.
By day, Alwyn Joseph is a senior executive in the technology industry, living with his family in Suwanee, Georgia — a life made possible, he’ll tell you, by the opportunities the United States provided to him as a first-generation immigrant from India. But his evenings, weekends and a significant portion of his own money belong to something else entirely.
In 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns stripped daily wage workers in India’s slums of their livelihoods overnight, Alwyn rallied friends across the U.S. and abroad to send monthly grocery packages to affected families. What started as an emergency response evolved into Abundance Kitchen, a volunteer-led nonprofit he formally co-founded in 2023 that now operates across 45 slums and villages in Tamil Nadu, India.
Built on three pillars — food, clothing and education — the organization delivers nutritious weekend meals to children whose government schools only feed them on weekdays, distributes clothing and school supply kits, and works to pull the most vulnerable students away from cycles of poverty before they’re lost to them. With 95% or more of every rupee going directly to beneficiaries — and Alwyn personally covering overhead costs — Abundance Kitchen’s reach already runs into the thousands. Its sights are set on a million lives by 2035.
What inspired you to start Abundance Kitchen?
I’ve been engaged in community service in different forms since my engineering school days in India, back in 2004, 2005. Even before I graduated, I started an organization focused on anti-corruption and social activism. After I moved to the States, that work continued more informally — helping people with school fees, college fees, finding jobs.
First-gen immigrant and tech exec Alwyn Joseph leads Abundance Kitchen, a nonprofit delivering meals, clothing and education across 45 slums in India.
Then COVID hit in 2020. In India’s slums, most people are daily wage workers. When the government deployed stay-at-home orders, they lost their livelihoods overnight. These families have to work every single day just to feed themselves and their kids. So, I started rallying friends here in the States and around the world, and we supplied monthly grocery packages to close to 3,000 families. That’s when we really saw the depth of the need and decided to formalize it.
Can you walk us through what Abundance Kitchen does?
It started with food. Government schools in India typically feed kids breakfast and lunch on weekdays. But on weekends, those children are left to go hungry unless their parents can manage. So, we set out to fill that gap with consistent weekend meals.
From there we moved into clothing and school supplies. We collect gently used clothes and toys, clean and sanitize them, sort by age group and size, and distribute. Last year we reached 1,000 kids with full kits of clothing and school supplies. This year we’re targeting 2,000.
The third pillar we’re trying to venture into is education. There are plenty of organizations that support kids who are already doing well in school. But the pattern that we see in the slums is by the time a girl reaches ninth or tenth grade, family circumstances often pull her into household work and she gets stuck there. For boys, the pull is often toward the patterns of a parent who is in prison or involved in crime. We want to catch those kids before that happens and give them vocational skills like tailoring, electrical work, plumbing, something they can actually build a livelihood from.
Your co-founder, Clement Barnabas, actually lives among the communities you serve. Can you tell us about him?
He’s been doing community service for 15 years, and a few years ago he made the decision to move his entire life into the slums — gave up his home, lives among the people we serve. His wife has a good job, they could live very differently, but that’s the commitment he made. I’ve known him since our engineering school days, more than 20 years now. He’s much more intense than I am. These communities are not easy to navigate. There are people who try to take advantage, nonprofits that get lost trying to help. His being there gives us the confidence that we’re reaching the actual beneficiary and not getting fooled around.
You immigrated from India yourself. Why does this cause hit so close to home for you?
Childhood hunger is hard. I haven’t experienced a lot of it myself, but I’ve experienced some of it, and I had friends who experienced it deeply. I saw those hardships up close. Whenever I see a child go hungry or in dire need, I relate it back to my own two kids. That breaks my heart every time.
And logically, somebody has to break the cycle. It’s a vicious cycle that goes on generation to generation. By the grace of God, I’m in a position of power on the corporate side, I’m doing well. So I think it’s only right to channel those blessings into something like this. If you are blessed, it’s not just for you — it is for you to be a channel of blessing to others.
What do you hope for the children Abundance Kitchen is serving?
I’ll be very glad if even 10 or 15 percent of them break the cycle of poverty and go on to have extraordinary lives. Over a period of time, I believe the kids we’re helping today will become our volunteers in five or 10 years. There will be a pay-it-forward model. We’re building a critical mass right now, and in a decade, I think we’ll have thousands of people who are willing to pay it forward— and that network effect is what will make the mission grow faster than anything else.
What do you want people to understand about the communities you work in?
It’s very easy to judge from the outside. When you actually get close and see people’s lives, it’s a very different story. The struggles are real. The perspectives are different from what you imagine. Yes, there is crime, there is poverty — all of that is true. But these kids are innocent. They have the same potential as any of our children. What they lack is opportunity. If you want to be fair to them, give them an opportunity and see how they thrive.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own nonprofit?
Just go do it. I know a lot of people have great intentions and then run a lot of worst-case scenarios in their minds before they ever start. The best way to learn — and to get truly hooked on this kind of work — is to just get hands on and do it. You’ll make mistakes. Every time, you’ll get better. You’ll learn how to serve more effectively, use money more wisely, identify the right beneficiaries. But none of that happens if you never begin. If you have the intention, go do it.
