Leaders of a student organization that fights hunger in Alamance County invited Elon President Leo M. Lambert and his wife, Laurie, to prepare meals with them this month as they celebrated a $5,000 grant to expand their impact across the region.
The grant from the national Campus Kitchens Project/CoBank Rural Hunger Outreach initiative will help student volunteers continue to provide over 200 meals to community members each week through a collaborative relationship with Allied Churches of Alamance County and the Community Services Agency of Alamance County.
Nearly one out of every five residents in the county is considered food insecure, a condition in which healthy, nutritious food is not consistently accessible.
The grant will also support a partnership with the Center for Environmental Studies to incorporate fresh produce from Loy Farm into weekly meals, supplement those meals with locally grown vegetables, and develop farm-to-fork nutritional programs, said Abbey Riesett ’15, interim Campus Kitchen coordinator in Elon’s Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement.
“We are surrounded by a rural community that is in need,” Riesett said, “and we’re trying to introduce even more nutritional awareness through our programs.”
In addition, Campus Kitchen student leaders will attend an upcoming summit on hunger and nutrition to share best practices with other Campus Kitchen programs across the United States.
Elon was one of seven colleges or universities to receive funding from the national Campus Kitchens Project/CoBank Rural Hunger Outreach initiative, a two-year, $150,000 effort to “support the development of innovative hunger solutions” in rural communities.
Others were Washington & Lee University, the University of Georgia, Troy University, St. Lawrence University, Minnesota State University and Gettysburg College.
According to the national Campus Kitchens Project, which currently works with 42 schools around the United States, a national team will evaluate effective programs and develop toolkits that will allow other universities to replicate the efforts.
Campus Kitchen student leaders celebrated the grant this month with Elon President Leo M. Lambert and his wife, Laurie, who met with the organization in the McEwen Dining Hall kitchen to prepare meals for area residents.
The Lamberts have been strong advocates of Campus Kitchen since the program first expanded to Elon in 2011. Laurie Lambert also chairs the board of directors of Allied Churches, an Alamance County nonprofit that provides emergency services to those in need.
Laurie Lambert said the number of families requesting assistance in Alamance County has grown in recent years.
“More people are in need of help to feed their families and be independent,” she said. “If families can save a little bit of money on a meal, it might help them a little more with an electric bill or with housing or another family need.”
Leo Lambert said Campus Kitchen at Elon University plays an important role across the region.
“We are a pretty privileged community relative to a lot of our neighbors. We have resources we can share, including food that can be repurposed, and talented students with energy,” he said. “Programs like this connect us to our community – and it’s important for a university to be connected to the community in which it’s located.”