A Pella High alum continues to make a national impact in the fight against hunger.

Maria Rose Belding is the executive director of the Matching Excess And Needs for Stability (MEANS) Database.

Belding tells KNIA/KRLS News the conversation about making food more efficient can also be meaningful at a local level.

“I think that one of the biggest struggles that sometimes people who want to do good have, is they don’t start with the question ‘what to you need?’,” she says. “You have to start by asking ‘what can I do for you, what do you need from me?’ and going with what that particular community needs.”

She says part of the idea behind the MEANS Database, which is now in 43 states, started at the Pella Food Shelf.

“Melissa Zula runs the Pella Food Shelf — she’s absolutely fantastic, and I would watch her put an extraordinary amount of effort into saving food, just herculean efforts to try and save it, and we would still throw a lot of it way. And that told me this wasn’t a leadership issue in our own shelf, that this was a bigger problem, this was a systemic issue.”

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