By Ivy Zhao
Educators 4 Impact, a non-profit organization committed to promoting equal access to educational opportunities and sharing experiences in various majors, universities, industries, and companies, was joined by Kai Mirchandani and Oscar Anderson, students at Palo Alto High School.
In 2020, the two students partnered to reduce food waste at their school. Later, however, as COVID-19 emerged and Palo Alto High School started offering free lunch as COVID-19 relief for students, food waste only became more prevalent. Mirchandani and Anderson found a new way to end food waste at their school, starting a club called People Plates Planet, or PPP. The club allowed for baskets to be placed around the school, acting as an uneaten food receiver. The uneaten food would then be taken to an opportunity center across the street from the school by adult volunteers, allowing the food to be redistributed.
Mirchandani is a junior at Palo Alto High School and serves as a co-founder of the zero-waste non-profit, PPP. Outside of PPP, he also serves as a host of Call for Leaders. Mirchandani joins E4I in an interview with Elaine Cao to speak on the experience of being involved with PPP.
The following is a summary of Cao’s interview with Mirchandani.
Can you give us a better explanation of P.P.P and exactly what it is?
People Place Planet is a non-profit founded in Palo Alto High School with the goal of rerouting wasted food to the hungry. The club is situated around campus everyday, receiving intact food and bringing all food collected to the local opportunity center. This reduces food waste, CO2 emissions, and wasted materials used to make the food.
What prompted you to start P.P.P?
When I first came back from lockdown, the free lunch was the first thing he noticed; the second thing was the amount of food in the trash. What prompted me to start PPP was how easy the solution would be and how anyone could contribute, as well as a moral obligation as a person with privilege to give back to the less fortunate.
Who was your biggest supporter when you were creating P.P.P?
My biggest supporter was probably my co-founder and the opportunity center. They helped with logistics. Angelina and Alfredo, two people from the opportunity center specifically, were very helpful. We want to thank them as well.
P.P.P started a year or two ago, so how did you expand your project?
We’re trying to expand by reaching out to schools interested in the project and implementing this system in their own school.
What are some of your current and future goals for P.P.P?
Our present goals are to expand to other schools in the Bay Area and our future goals are to expand to other schools across California, the country, and even the world.
Could you explain how you plan to achieve these goals?
The main thing would be to contact other schools and gain a social media presence.
Through your time as P.P.P’s founder, what skills have you developed or used from this experience?
The most important skills I’ve developed are leadership, moral, and time-management skills. Leadership skills were developed near the start as it involved a ton of planning and execution, as well as talking to various leaders to get approvals and support. Additionally, I got the same leadership skills by getting volunteers to do the job. This also created time management skills. Near the start, we had to set a goal and plan to fully meet our deadlines. After I finished the project, I gained a newfound sense of duty and empathy towards those less fortunate than ourselves, and I’m now able to gauge their insights and worldviews.
What were some of your challenges, like time commitment, lack of volunteers, adversaries, etc, in creating the program?
One of the mistakes I made was that I didn’t plan any of my events out, which I should’ve. This led to confusion that could have easily been avoided. My advice would be to start with a planner. There’ll probably be a point where the project becomes fully autonomous, but overall, my advice would be to start with a planner. Another obstacle I had was a lack of volunteers. I got this solved by getting this in the school newspapers, in the school broadcast, and starting a school club. We didn’t have adversaries, luckily, but if you do, then my advice would be to work around their restrictions.
For anyone that would want to create their own club, can you give us a breakdown of the process that you went through for creating the club?
My first step would be to identify your problem. Second step would be to contact people who could help you with your project, and from there, you can start solving your problem. Thirdly, make sure you have enough time to complete your project. You don’t have many times where you can truly make a difference and high school is one of those times, so even if you don’t have time, then make time.
How do you juggle school and P.P.P?
Right now, PPP runs pretty autonomously, so I can focus on school. I started planning in the summer, because you don’t have to worry about time. If it’s an option, you can set aside time every week to work on your project. If you play games everyday, you can play every other day to make time.
The most difficult part of PPP seems to be getting people to use the bins. How did you manage to get everyone to agree to use the bins?
I’d give high schoolers a lot more credit than people give them, because a lot of them have a moral sense of right and wrong, and when they see a bin and they have food, they’d rather put it in the bin than in the trash. I know a lot of high schoolers may not have that moral sense, and the way you get around that is to put the bins in a more accessible place than the trash.
What is Call for Leaders?
Call for Leaders is an event to get other people interested in leadership and interested in founding their own non-profit. If people need help or motivation in creating their own idea to change the world; this is what Call for Leaders is about.
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