Junior Hunter Guthrie was selected by Madison High School to receive a 2025 Student Peace Award of Fairfax County.  He was one of 28 recipients honored at a reception on March 2.  Rep. Gerry Connolly praised the work of the awardees and introduced a Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives listing all of them and recognizing their work as “the building blocks of a more peaceful and tolerant world.”

While a student in middle school, Hunter Guthrie happened to read a flyer from Cornerstones of Reston (one of the sponsoring organizations of the Student Peace Awards) seeking food for its Embry Rucker Shelter. He was so moved by this need that he contacted the shelter and offered to help. For the next few weeks, Hunter baked items such as cookies, cupcakes, and banana bread and donated them to the shelter.

Hunter then received an email from the shelter announcing their new “no turn-away” policy. This meant that no visitors to the shelter would be denied food, however the portions would be decreased. This inspired him to do more than just bake. He immediately began assembling bagged to-go meals, but he realized that his impact would be greater if he could increase his food donations.

Hunter was aware of the vast amounts of unsold food that restaurants waste, and he realized that this food could be distributed to people suffering from food insecurity. A few days later he was eating at a Panera restaurant, and he found the courage to approach the manager to inquire about their excess food. The manager was very pleasant and agreed that Hunter could retrieve the restaurant’s unsold food. Multiple times a week, and often late in the evening after closing, Hunter began transporting food from Panera to the Embry Rucker Shelter.

His next step was to convince other local restaurants to allow him to retrieve their leftover food on a regular basis, and to deliver it to the shelter with the help of his mother. Ongoing donations now come from Chick-Fil-A and Crumbl Cookie.  DePaul’s Urban Farm donates seasonal items including apple cider, squash, apples, pears, and tomatoes.

Hunter has worked to share his passion for eliminating food waste and hunger with other students. As a sophomore, he was accepted into a year-long program, the Youth Conservation Leadership Institute. Its members work independently on environmental issues through both research and action. His research on how eliminating food waste helps to protect the world’s land, water, and other resources was presented throughout Virginia.  He also pointed out that food waste emits methane gas as it decays, and it is considered the second most significant contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide.

Many other students now join Hunter in addressing food insecurity. Through X2VOL, Hunter has solicited the help of over 300 private school, public school, and home-schooled teens from Fairfax County. (X2VOL is a website used by educators and students to track and independently verify service hours.)

Hunter grants students service hours for preparing bagged to-go meals. He recalls that he had no idea the shelter even existed until he saw the flyer, and so he grants an additional service-hour to any student who personally delivers the meals to the shelter. Hunter wants teens to know that food insecurity exists in our community, and also that their volunteering has a direct and positive impact on those who live here.