Food insecurity is a concern for a number of students at the University of Memphis’ Lambuth campus in Jackson, and different student groups are doing something about it.
Students at the Loewenberg College of Nursing on campus approached the Office of Student Services on campus with the hope of helping put together a food pantry to help those students who are food insecure.
“We had a room here next to our offices that was being used for storage, and the students from the nursing program helped with the first round of heavy lifting of clearing the room out, moving all the stuff to the second floor of the Wilder Student Union and putting in shelves and removing doors from a couple of closets,” said Student Services Coordinator Beth Ann Simpson.
The school was already coordinating a canned food drive for Regional Inter-Faith Association (RIFA), but when they contacted RIFA about getting help for the on-campus food pantry, everyone decided to keep whatever food is collected on campus.
That drive will be finished next week as it goes through UM’s homecoming, but RIFA already helped out with supplies to get the pantry started as a load of food was dropped off Friday morning that included canned vegetables, soups, breakfast items and macaroni and cheese packets.
Blair Dyer, the director of community engagement for the school’s Inter-Club Council, has been a driving force for the food drive effort.
“We want to bridge the gap between students and volunteer initiatives in our local community,” Dyer said. “We’ve always volunteered with RIFA and we’ve had a program where students could donate their unused meal plan card swipes to be used by people who needed a meal, but we’d never had anything like a food pantry.
“We decided to put together a month-long canned food drive with the goal of 1,000 cans, and we’re up to 400 with a week to go. This is a way to initiate the campus and serve the campus too.”
Dyer said there are a lot of students on campus who are in need for different reasons, and they’re glad to be able to do it.
Anyone off campus who’d like to donate to the cause can do so by contacting Simpson in the student services office at 731-425-1951.
Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 731-425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at editorbrandon.
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