Navya Shah grew up with a message from her mom that always stuck with her: don’t waste food.

It’s a simple message and a common one, emphasizing the importance of finishing the food on your plate and the privilege of having the meal to begin with.

But for Shah, that message did more than just teach her to be grateful. It helped build a passion for eliminating food insecurity, she said.

“​​My family used to travel a lot, and we’d always go to hotels and Airbnbs,” Shah said. “There would be these large banquet halls, and you’d see at the end of the day, all these perfectly, freshly prepared meals just being trashed, thrown into these large dumpsters, because at the end of the day … they just don’t have the space to store all of these fresh meals.”

Inspired with an idea, the 17-year-old started a nonprofit organization focused on addressing food insecurity alongside education inequality.

Empower Futurewave Foundation started by providing English as a second language courses to students from around the world who did not have access to such programs. The organization now provides English and STEM courses to students in eight countries, including Mexico, Guatemala and Vietnam.

In addition to the global classes, it also has a local initiative called EmpowerEats, which helps restaurants in the Naperville area donate meals they do not sell to local shelters. Shah said that through the EmpowerEats initiative, about 150 meals are donated every week to Hesed House, a homeless shelter in Aurora and the largest second largest shelter in Illinois.

“We’re serving about 240 to 250 adults every night so those donations are greatly appreciated,” said Yuri Ramirez, a volunteer coordinator at Hesed House. “They help us serve as many guests as we do.”

Shah’s organization has also donated meals to domestic violence shelters like Mutual Ground and Metropolitan Family Services. In 2025, It gave more than 6,000 meals to domestic violence and community shelters, Shah said.

Navya Shah puts food in the freezer at Hesed House in Aurora on July 19, 2025. (Navya Shah)

She started her first initiative in 2024, but prior to that she had experience teaching English as a second language through her work with Erie House, a nonprofit providing support to immigrant and low-income families in Chicago. Her work there started three or four years ago, she said.

The moment she credits with sparking her passion for education inequality began with people she met while her family was vacationing in Mexico in 2021. They stayed in an Airbnb near Tulum for a few months.

“Around us, there were a bunch of local kids,” Shah said. “I started teaching the little kids how to speak English. … And from there, it kind of grew. I started getting more and more kids everywhere I traveled. There were always local kids and even adults who were interested in learning English.”

To continue her work and reach as many people as possible, she decided a nonprofit would be the best path forward. She partners with local businesses and nonprofits in various countries, including the Breath of Life Ministry in Mexico and Iglesia Misional in Guatemala.

“We’d tell them a little bit about ourselves, the kind of work that we’ve already done and the kind of work that we continue to hope to do,” she said. “And a lot of them, they’re not picky, they are grateful for all the help that they can get.”

For some of her students abroad, consistent access to food is also a challenge. Without that, effective learning becomes much more difficult, Shah said. In her hometown of Naperville, she came to a similar realization — so much food available yet so much of it not making it to people who need it.

“Over time, I started noticing similar system gaps here in Naperville, especially around food insecurity and food waste,” Shah said. “There’s like about 20 events each week in Naperville that have large catering … they all have surplus food. So events like those, at the end of the day, the food that’s left over, it gets wasted just because (they) don’t have the infrastructure to kind of contain all that food in refrigerators.”

Navya Shah picks up food from Bombay Chopsticks in Naperville to donate to a local shelter on Nov. 1, 2025. (Navya Shah)

That gap pushed her to launch EmpowerEats, helping restaurants donate meals they don’t sell by the end of the day. Volunteers and business owners sign up through the “Bridge2Meal” app Shah created, which coordinate logistics between volunteers and restaurants.

But getting restaurants on board with the initiative is a challenge, Shah said. Some are skeptical because of her age while others have safety and health concerns. To help remedy that, Shah partnered with state Sen. Laura Ellman to inform them about the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which provides protections to people making good faith food donations.

“My family always believed that food should not go to waste, never throw away food,” said Sujay Karvekar, owner of Temptinn Indian Fusion in Naperville. “Your plate might be full, but somebody else’s is empty. So when there’s an opportunity that you can help, do it. And I think that connected very well with Navya’s nonprofit.”

Catering is a significant part of Karvekar’s business. Shah’s father initially approached Karvekar about his daughter’s nonprofit at an event in downtown Naperville. Having worked as a food vendor at events in the past, he knew all too well how leftover food was a problem, Shah said.

“And since then, every time there is an opportunity, we always make sure we reach out to Navya and her nonprofit and basically help feed people,” Karvekar said.

Temptinn Indian Fusion in downtown Naperville on Jan. 16, 2025. Temptinn consistently partners with Empower Futurewave Foundation to donate unused food to local shelters. (Sujay Karvekar)

Temptinn is now one of Empower Futurewave’s most consistent partners in the EmpowerEats initiative and has been recognized with the nonprofit’s Compassionate Kitchen Award.

“As we get more consistent, we hope to replicate what we have here in Naperville, replicate it in the larger Chicagoland area — Oak Park, Lombard, Aurora,” Shah said. “And we’re also hoping that if we can get more secure partnerships with restaurants, we can also kind of ask the shelters themselves, ‘Hey, what do you need more of this week?’”

As she continues her work, Shah said her organization is working on an initiative similar to EmpowerEats, but on a global scale.

“We wanted to be open to help anyone and everyone, and we wanted it to be youth led,” she said.

cstein@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/17/naperville-student-shat-empower-food-english/