Rock stars at UA

Feeding a need

The student volunteer-managed and operated food pantry at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in just three years has become the model for similar programs sprouting on university campuses across America.

Most folks don't know this busy-bee place called the Full Circle Campus Food Pantry even exists in a relatively obscure office within Bud Walton Hall beside the Union parking garage.

But today the pantry program is flourishing. It's helping hundreds of UA students, faculty, staff and their families stay fed each week with food donated through vendors, grants from corporations such as Tyson and Wal-Mart, and private contributions from local farmers and merchants.

Each week, any student or employee with university identification can drop in on Mondays and Thursdays until midafternoon and receive a three-day supply of foodstuffs.

Angela Oxford, who directs the UA Volunteer Action Center, uses her lightest touch to help guide the operation managed by a student board and operated entirely by dozens of students who are eager to volunteer in receiving, packaging, picking up and delivering increasing food contributions.

She emphasized that the program goes out of its way to honor confidentiality so not to embarrass anyone. "The purpose behind all we do is wrapped up in our mission of nourishing bodies and empowering minds," Oxford told me. The program also has a Facebook page and a website (fullcircle.uark.edu).

The students make collecting food at the Full Circle pantry flow as simple and anonymous as possible. Recipients show up, show their ID and take a bag of nutritionally complete foods including peanut butter, tuna, soups, cereal and macaroni and cheese. Clients can indicate food preferences and dietary restrictions, as well as the size of their families. They can even place orders online to be picked up later.

From the way students manage the pantry, you wouldn't know this operation sprang from a planning session of older folks in February 2010. "The problem with hunger on campus became apparent after we heard how some students were taking food from the cafeteria to have enough to get through a weekend," said Oxford.

When Chancellor David Gearhart learned of the need through Oxford and his wife Jane, who'd also had become involved in the pantry idea, he voiced support for creating the program. The chancellor's blessing, combined with an encouraging meeting between Oxford, students and enthusiastic members of Fayetteville's Cooperative Emergency Outreach, breathed life into the the idea.

Cooperative Emergency Outreach is comprised of 21 Fayetteville churches, and since 1990 has actively helped resolve food, social and practical problems.

The effectiveness of the university's pantry and its related efforts to benefit students and employees is most obvious in the soaring numbers served. Upon opening in February 2011, the pantry served 12 clients its first month. Last week, it served 278. Last year, students, staff and community donated 47,000 pounds of food.

"The students and the student board that manages this operation are responsible for the success," said Oxford. And today, campuses across America have launched food-pantry programs based largely on the example set by UA. The pantry, after three short years, has been called the nation's "Rock Star" program while mentoring as many as 85 other university programs.

Its successes recently were rewarded by a $225,000 grant from the Tyson Foods corporate giving program. That gift allows the pantry and its related Volunteer Action Center to employ additional staff and bolster its efforts in other ways.

An original Tyson grant of $35,000 written by Claire Allison, the graduate student who also wrote the latest larger Tyson grant request at Tyson's suggestion, enabled the pantry to acquire a walk-in freezer. Allison has become an example of the difference one concerned, capable person can make in any program anywhere.

That crucial acquisition of that freezer led to an offshoot humane effort called Razorback Food Recovery where prepared meals left over (but never served) whenever Chartwells, the UA's food service provider, serves larger school functions are quickly recovered and spread among other benevolent feeding programs such as the Salvation Army and Seven Hills.

Lest you mistakenly believe this can't represent much surplus, Oxford said the initial load from Chartwells that was placed into a donated Tyson freezer truck before delivery amounted to 12,000 pounds, and included many pans filled with bacon and sausage. Nine tons of these types of food have been recovered and distributed since February.

Students repackage and deliver the prepared food. Just imagine the enormity of tasty and nutritious food that goes to waste when a dinner prepared for 3,000 winds up serving just 1,800. But no longer.

What a great idea led by a board of volunteer students (over 9,000 of them volunteered through the UA's Volunteer Action Center last year). "There are so many all wanting and waiting to do good things," said Oxford. Makes me feel all warm inside, like I've just enjoyed a satisfying meal.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

Editorial on 09/21/2014

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