Feel Good Friday - Share Meals

As we prepare to share Thanksgiving meals with family and friends next week, it's a good time to spotlight Share Meals, an organization working to ensure college students don't have to choose between paying for their education and paying for food.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York City, the mission of Share Meals is to ensure all college students are food secure while empowering them to strengthen their own communities through sharing food. This is accomplished through technology, activism, and advocacy. 

The organization began when founder Jonathan Chin, then an NYU graduate student, saw a post on the Facebook page "NYU Secrets" from a student who had run out of meal swipes and couldn't afford food. Within 24 hours, Chin coded a solution that would connect students. You can see him talk about the origins of Share Meals in this video.

College student hunger affects approximately 40% of students nationwide at some point during their academic careers. The financial pressures of tuition, housing, textbooks, and living expenses often leave students making impossible choices that impact their ability to focus in class and stay enrolled.

Share Meals addresses this through several programs. The Share Meals app serves as a digital platform where students can donate unused meal swipes to peers experiencing food insecurity. Many college meal plans include "swipes"—prepaid meals that students access by swiping their ID cards at campus dining halls. Unused swipes expire and the app enables students to donate swipes to peers before that happens. The app also allows students to post information about free food available from campus events—all in real-time based on location.

Other programs include Open Kitchen, offering community cooking classes where students learn to prepare affordable, healthy meals together, and Packathon events where students package meals for distribution.

Share Meals now operates on over 400 university campuses across the United States, helping more than 15,000 students and facilitating thousands of shared meals. In 2021, the app assisted 4,000 food-insecure NYU students in just one semester.

If you'd like to support Share Meals, there are many ways to do so. Make a donation and amplify their message on social media. Follow Share Meals on Instagram or LinkedIn and subscribe to their YouTube channel. Happy Thanksgiving!