For Amy Hill, who directs campus activities at Colorado College, discussions on food equity date back to 2018, when she started a \u201cbuild-your-own-snack-pack\u201d program. The program aimed to address food insecurity for students who remain on campus over long breaks, when campus dining halls reduce their meal options and hours.<\/p>\n
The snack-pack program ran on afternoons before the start of a long break. The offerings included snacks like popcorn and candy, but not any fruits and vegetables or ingredients you could build a meal with, Hill said.<\/p>\n
Sophie Cardin \u201922<\/strong>, the vice president of outreach for CC\u2019s student government association (CCSGA), said food insecurity plagued the campus long before COVID hit. When her outreach committee put out a survey to students about the costs of college textbooks last spring before the pandemic,\u00a0the results\u00a0were sobering.<\/p>\n \u201cA surprising number of students at CC, and in colleges in general, have skipped meals, not bought groceries, lived off of ramen in order to afford textbooks,\u201d Cardin told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.<\/p>\n So when the pandemic hit this March, Hill knew she would need to step up her efforts even further. Some students stranded on campus wanted free, healthy options for their meals without having to risk COVID exposure at a grocery store, Hill said.<\/p>\n In early April, Campus Activities paraprofessional Antonio Soto \u201919<\/strong>, joined Hill to help turn the snack-pack program into a well-stocked food pantry where CC students living on campus could shop weekly for their meals.<\/p>\n After the school sent home the majority of students last spring because of the pandemic, about 300 students remained on campus, Hill said. Over the course of the summer, around 65 additional students returned to campus.<\/p>\n \u201cWe bulked up what we were doing at that time a little bit more,\u201d Hill told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.<\/p>\n In an average week, Soto estimated around 25 to 35 students sign up for a time slot to pick items out of the food pantry. Because of walk-ins, though, around 40 students typically show up. Hill and Soto said they spend around $600 per week on groceries for students, so every student is able to walk away with roughly $15 worth of food each visit.<\/p>\n At the end of spring and during the summer, some of the Campus Activities budget paid for the pantry initiative. The project was able to continue throughout the Fall Semester because CC\u2019s student government decided to fund it as part of their annual budget.<\/p>\n Cardin said CCSGA continued meeting throughout the summer in order to take care of student needs on campus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of complaints about the Bon App\u00e9tit hours being weird and the food not being healthy enough, and people not being able to get to grocery stores,\u201d Cardin said. \u201cSo, the Executive Council met with Amy Hill from Campus Activities, and we started by just funding dry goods and canned goods.\u201d<\/p>\n Although some talks preceded CCSGA\u2019s decision to fund the pantry initiative, Cardin noticed that many CCSGA representatives have felt a greater need to engage in redistributive justice programs despite a reduced presence on campus.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a lot of people who didn\u2019t know these issues existed on campus, COVID has really brought to light some of the problems that are underlying and always there,\u201d Cardin said.<\/p>\n Photos by Patil Khakhamian ’22<\/p><\/div>\n Housed in a meeting room in upstairs Worner, the food pantry has tables lined with options catering to different dietary needs. Fresh fruits and vegetables always go fast, Soto said. Some other popular items include pasta, bread, peanut butter and jelly, chips, and popcorn.<\/p>\n Dairy-free alternative milk options, which have long shelf lives, are also a favorite. Hill said she tries to stay away from distributing perishable goods like yogurt, cheese, butter, and eggs because they have limited refrigerator space, and she doesn\u2019t want to create waste if students don\u2019t take everything each week.<\/p>\n Small containers of cereal and Pop-Tarts aren\u2019t very popular among students, Hill said, though they are some of the easiest snacks to find at the store.<\/p>\n One week, Hill and Soto were surprised to find that the canned goods they started offering because of student demand were left untouched.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a few \u2018aha\u2019 moments and learning curves that happened over this,\u201d Hill said. When she asked students why they didn\u2019t take any canned goods, they told her that none of them had functional can openers.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the next week we went to the Dollar Tree and bought 15 functional can openers to pass out to students,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n During the first few months of the pandemic, Hill and Soto did all the grocery shopping, unloading and arranging of the food, sanitizing the space, and pantry supervision by themselves.<\/p>\n The project became much easier, they said, once more people realized the food pantry was happening, and staff and students signed up to volunteer.<\/p>\n Soto said so many staff members reached out to help volunteer that he actually had to turn some of them away and create a waitlist in case people canceled.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was amazing to see how many staff are willing to help out and volunteer,\u201d Soto said.<\/p>\n In June, four Campus Activities interns also started helping with the pantry, and became its main organizers for two weeks in August, when Hill and Soto were swamped with preparation for New Student Orientation.<\/p>\n Hill said they plan to run the pantry over Winter Break \u2014 on Tuesdays, instead of Thursdays \u2014 and into the spring. For CC students living on campus, there will continue to be no barrier to entry.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to say, \u2018Oh, you could only use the food pantry if you fall into this financial bracket, or you have demonstrated need,\u2019\u201d Hill said. \u201cWe wanted anyone to be able to come through without shame and take what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n Original publication date: Dec. 2<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As COVID-19 continues to rage across the country, communities struggling with food insecurity grow increasingly vulnerable. In August,\u00a0The Denver Post\u00a0reported\u00a0one in three Coloradans\u00a0were struggling to eat. Last month,\u00a0CNN\u00a0reported there were\u00a0thousands of cars in line\u00a0to collect food from a pantry in Dallas, Texas. While Congress sits on another stimulus bill, some communities have embraced forms of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":16635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-16726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2020","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2021\/01\/Pantry.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16726"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16730,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions\/16730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A look inside the pantry\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2021\/01\/DSC05789-300x200.jpg\")