by Yvonne Pitrof, MPA student December 7, 2018

Did you know that 1 in 4 college students skip meals and go hungry because they lack the resources to buy enough food?1[i] Yes, student hunger is real, including here in our Evergreen community.

We recently came off a week long break where many of us shared feasts with family, celebrating and giving thanks for the people in our lives. In Evergreen’s on-campus residence halls, there were a handful of students who were unable to travel home to be with family over this break. The meals they normally rely on were unaccessible to them. The food services on campus were closed that week. Some students might have the means and family financial support to eat out all week, but let’s be real; students who are already going into debt to come to school are not very likely to have the extra cash to pay for a week of meals on top of their already budgeted and paid for meal plan for the school year.

Rather than ignore this plight, thirteen MPA students taking the Managing Organizations elective course, decided to make some inquiries about need on campus over break and take some action to support our own Evergreen community.

What we learned: Evergreen’s residence services typically see between 25-50 students remain on campus over the Thanksgiving week break; the only resources provided to students are lists of local shelters and meal programs.

Over the weekend leading into the break, we donated and collected easy to fix items that could help stave off hunger pangs. We also collected and coughed up cash to turn into $10 gift cards for the local Safeway, the most accessible grocery store from campus. We then delivered this load of food items and a total of 35 $10 gift cards to be used by students staying in the residence halls over the break to help keep them fed. Dozens of students were fed through the week thanks to these efforts.

We just learned that there will be about 60 students remaining in the residence halls over the upcoming winter break. Again, there will be minimal on-campus food services for these students unable to go home to families over the holidays. This is another opportunity to create awareness around the needs within our Evergreen community and to take some action to support one another.

If you want to help, donations of non-perishable food items and grocery gift cards (preferably in $10 increments), or even some written words of wisdom and encouragement, can be dropped off at the MPA office with Anna Rhoads through December 21st (Lab I Bldg. room 3024). For other inquiries or interest in  helping with this project, you can email Yvonne Pitrof at yvonne.pitrof@gmail.com.

[i] Goldrick-Rab, S., Richardson, J., Schneider, J., Hernandez, A., & Cady, C. (2018)  Still Hungry and Homeless in College. Wisconsin HOPE Lab.