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!

Feel Good Friday - U.S. Hunger

With Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits on hold and a variety of holidays coming up, it seems like a great time to highlight the work being done by U.S. Hunger.

Founded as Feeding Children Everywhere in 2010 and headquartered in Longwood, Florida, the first project of U.S. Hunger was sending food to Haiti in response to the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, which displaced 1.3 million people. 

Recognizing that 1 in 10 households struggle with food insecurity, now the mission of U.S. Hunger is “feeding families today and uniting them to a healthier tomorrow. Here’s how they do it. 

The Full Cart program is a virtual food drive. Individuals and corporations make a monetary donation and U.S. Hunger partners with community-based organizations to provide individuals and families boxes with shelf-stable food and fresh produce. Hunger Projects are high-energy meal packing events good for groups who want to make a difference in the fight against hunger. This video is a glimpse into what it looks like - hairnets and confetti together at last!

U.S. Hunger also ships containers packed with meals and supplies to partners in 53 countries around the world and provides disaster relief where it’s needed whether that means mobilizing volunteers or raising funds to ship food.

Since they began, U.S. Hunger has distributed over 191 million meals and more than 157,000 food carts to hungry people across the globe thanks to the help of over 800,000 volunteers Looking at this 2024 impact video, you can see some of the 88,414 volunteers who participated in 281 hunger projects and packaged over 18 million meals last year. You can read individual impact stories here.

If you’d like to help U.S. Hunger provide healthy meals to those in need there are many ways you can get involved. Volunteer your time, donate your money, shop for merch and raise awareness on social media. Follow U.S. Hunger on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and subscribe to their YouTube channel.

Feel Good Friday - St. Mary's Food Bank

It’s the first Friday in September, which means it’s also National Food Bank Day. A perfect day to learn more about the organization that started it all, St. Mary’s Food Bank.

Founded in 1967 by John van Hengel and headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, St. Mary’s Food Bank is the world’s first food bank! Their mission is “bridging the gap for Arizona communities with nourishment for today and hope for tomorrow.”

As they explain on their website, food insecurity is a problem for 2 million Arizonans, which includes 1 in 5 children. To address this issue, St. Mary’s Food Bank provides food at no cost to over 900 partner agencies across Arizona. These include organizations such as food pantries, homeless shelters, meal centers, domestic violence shelters, afterschool programs for at-risk children and low-income senior living centers.

The programs run by St. Mary’s Food Bank and their partners include food distribution through both food banks and home delivery, child nutrition programs that provide healthy meals to children in daily after-school programs and during the summer, and a skills center that provides tailored job training in the culinary and foodservice industry as well as the warehouse and logistics industry.

Working with their partner agencies, St. Mary’s Food Bank distributes over 300,000 pounds of food each day. In fiscal year 2023, the total was more than 123,000,000 pounds of food, which is the equivalent of 93,000,000 meals! This food has been a lifeline for so many families across Arizona. You can read individual stories at this link.

If you’d like to support St. Mary’s Food Bank on National Food Bank Day, or any other, there are many ways to do so. People in Phoenix can volunteer their time and the rest of us can donate our money. Everyone can raise awareness by engaging on social media. Follow St. Mary’s Food Bank on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and subscribe to their YouTube channel.