Mother Teresa of celery.

This year marks the 75th birthday of John Van Hengel, the man who founded food banking. Since 1967, when he launched the concept in Phoenix, Arizona, tons of leftover food from grocers, food brokers and manufacturers have pacified hungry stomachs in the USA, Great Britain, Philippines, Belgium, Canada and other countries.

Recuperating after an injury and a painful divorce in Arizona, Van Hengel, an advertising and marketing professional, thought of doing something meaningful with his life. He began volunteering for the St Vincent de Paul charity dining room. He knew there were more resources for food in the community. So he used an old truck and volunteers to pick leftover fruits and vegetables from homes and nearby farms. Soon he had over 50 men helping him glean the produce. Their efforts brought in more food than the dining room needed, more than the truck could handle and also more work for Van Hengel.

One day, a woman whose husband was on death row told Van Hengel how she was feeding her ten children from the food she gathered from the local grocer's dumpster. The woman and children appeared quite healthy, so Van Hengel called the grocer. Sure enough, dairy and meat products approaching their expiry dates, day old bread and leftover produce were being thrown away. He persuaded the grocer to give the leftover food to the dining room's feeding programme instead. Once again, Van Hengel's stamina and truck were over-taxed picking up and delivering the food.

Soon Van Hengel realized that he needed a central location where all the food could be collected together and the feeding programmes, agencies and missions could come and collect what they needed. With the help of $3,000 and an old building from St Mary's parish in Phoenix he started the project in November 1967. During the first year he and his staff of volunteers distributed nearly a quarter of a million pounds of food to 35 agencies. He later established many satellite food pantries to help the hungry throughout Arizona.

Many other agencies heard about Van Hengel's concept and within a few years, under his tutelage, food banks were established in California, Oregon and Seattle. In 1977 the Federal government gave Van Hengel a grant to teach the food bank method to cities across the US. He also established Second Harvest--a national network of about 182 food banks which receive food in large quantities from food manufacturers. They work with around 400 national donors.

Aptly dubbed `the Mother Teresa of celery', Van Hengel has dedicated his life to feeding the hungry. He wears the same shirt, same pants (hemmed with paper clips) and same shoes (spray-painted white) every day and, at 75, still works at St Mary's Food Bank and serves as a mentor to hundreds of food banks throughout the world. He eats only donated food and if anyone gives him money or an award, he donates it to the food bank.