Local Heroes

Barbara Eiswerth's fruit-collecting project builds community and provides education on food and farming.

In the late 1990s, Barbara Eiswerth was working on her Ph.D. in the poverty-stricken villages of Malawi, Africa, and witnessed extreme hunger firsthand. After returning home to Tucson, Arizona, she was overwhelmed by how her neighbors’ abundant fruit trees dropped fresh pecans, figs and grapefruits, only to rot on the sidewalk. “Thousands of trees are using the land, the soil, the nutrients, the precious water to grow fruit and then it goes to waste,” the vivacious, bright-eyed Eiswerth says. Read more.