Fighting Food Insecurity On Campus at the Campus Pantry

Presenter: Allison Floyd, Public Health Science, Global Public Health Scholars

For my practicum project, I worked with the campus pantry. The campus pantry works to bring food to the food insecure students on campus. It is currently located by the South Campus dining hall. At the pantry I worked to help others maintain social distancing guidelines, checked in clients, and I provided assistance to those gathering and finding food. In addition to those jobs, I assisted in setting up and stocking the pantry for the day. I also did some administrative work for the pantry, such as creating presentations to present to groups of interest and working on expanding the volunteer program for the pantry.

4 Comments

Tina Li

May 01, 2021

I think this work is very meaningful and impactful. I am wondering what other actions can be taken to help people avoid or escape food insecurity? Or, what are the main causes of food insecurity on campus?

afloyd16

May 11, 2021

Replying to

Hi Tina, thank you for your question! There are a few circumstances that can lead someone to become food insecure such as employment, income, physical location, and disability. Physical location refers to your proximity to a source of healthy food. There are some programs that can help people who are food insecure, such as SNAP and food stamps.

Cheryl Krizmanich

Apr 28, 2021

Hi Allison! I found your project very interesting and was wondering how do you think the statistic of food insecure students in 2017-2018 would compare to today given the pandemic?

afloyd16

May 11, 2021

Replying to

Hi Cheryl, thank you for your question! I would probably say that given the pandemic, the number of food insecure students has likely gone up since the study in 2017-2018. Before the pandemic, the food insecurity rate was actually declining, but because of the economic impact of the pandemic, less individuals had access to jobs and therefore less money to spend on food.