For the past two years, the EMU Free Food Room has supported members of the campus community experiencing food insecurity. Inside the room, located in the Ammon Heatwole House at 1110 Smith Ave., boxes and cans of nonperishable food items line sets of shelves while trays of fresh and frozen produce fill a cooler and freezer. A recent visit to the campus food pantry revealed crates of red and white onions, cartons of milk, boxes of macaroni and cheese, jars of peanut butter, bags of cereal and pasta, and plentiful cans of green beans, corn and diced tomatoes, just to mention a few offerings.
The Free Food Room is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to EMU students and employees in need. It is also an unsupervised space so that people can take what they need anonymously and with dignity.
But times are tough, demand is high, and funding is scant. The organizers behind the Free Food Room initiative, which relies on donations to continue operating, say that it stays afloat “on a wing and a prayer.” And, they say that without more financial support, it won’t have enough funding to operate after this semester.
With your help, you can contribute to keeping this invaluable resource alive. Make a gift to the Free Food Room fund, and ensure it will continue serving those in our campus community who experience food insecurity.
Donations of nonperishable food can be left inside the Free Food Room. People can also donate gift cards that will be used at grocery stores.
The Free Food Room is a joint initiative of the Food Insecurity Task Force—a group comprising EMU staff members Brian Martin Burkholder, Celeste Thomas and Trina Trotter Nussbaum—and the Sustainable Food Initiative (SFI). Members of the task force collect donations, write grant requests, order monthly deliveries through their partnership with the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank (at discounted pricing), pay bills, and send emails about fresh fruits and vegetables when they arrive.
The resource is a collaborative effort between various groups on campus. Work-study students through the Black Student Alliance and the Office of Faith and Spiritual Life sweep the floor, unload deliveries, restock shelves and check inventory. Students from SFI stock the freezer with meals from the dining hall and supply the room with fresh fruits and vegetables sourced from EMU gardens. A list of the items grown on campus, dated from August, noted: Roma and Big Beef tomatoes, Swiss chard, figs, jalapenos, and bell and banana peppers.
Last year an agreement with Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community’s Farm at Willow Run, just down the road on Harmony Drive, provided the Free Food Room with any produce that didn’t sell at its farm stand. Members of the task force anticipate partnering with VMRC’s USDA organic-certified farm again if possible.
The Free Food Room could use all the help it can get. According to data shared by task force organizers, its busiest month over the last school year, February 2024, saw 346 visitors (a sensor inside the room keeps a tally). Organizers spent $535 to order 1,110 pounds of food from the food bank that month.
Identifying a need
Food insecurity is an epidemic afflicting college campuses nationwide and EMU is no exception. A federal analysis released in July estimated that 23% of college students in 2020, or about 3.8 million students, experienced food insecurity.
From a Sept. 9 article on Chalkbeat.org:
“The report again shed light on what previous analysis of federal data have shown—that a large share of students struggle to put food on the table. The study reported that about 2.2 million of those 3.8 million students had low food security, or ate less than they should or skipped meals altogether.”
Prior to having its own space on campus, food assistance was funded through the Faith and Spiritual Life Compassion Fund, which helps students with emergency needs, and supported by Y-Serve food drives held twice a year. But the grassroots initiative was often disjointed and lacked a central system in place.
In 2018, after reading an article in The Washington Post about the widespread hunger problem on campuses, a group at EMU was spurred to action. The group identified food insecurity as a major need to address and began putting together the pieces that would eventually become the Free Food Room. In 2022, after years of talks and meetings, the Free Food Room began operating out of its current space in the Heatwole House. Organizers were approved for membership at the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank near the end of that year. The task force pays a yearly $50 membership fee, which is covered by Y-Serve.
The Free Food Room aligns with EMU’s 2023-28 strategic plan, Pathways of Promise: Preparing Tomorrow’s Unifying Leaders, and its vision to open new pathways of access and achievement. As EMU continues to live into its commitment to belonging—this year marked the most diverse incoming class in school history—and provide access to more students in financial need, the task force aims to take a proactive approach to securing funding to sustain its services.
The Free Food Room experiences higher periods of need during school breaks when the dining hall is closed and cannot supply the pantry with frozen meals. Nussbaum said graduate and international students are among those most susceptible to food insecurity in the EMU community. Many of them are far from home, have families to feed, and lack their own transportation.
“People don’t often think about college students as being needy, whether in terms of food or shelter,” she said. “I think we’re attending to a need that might not be universally known.”
A more welcoming space
This summer the Free Food Room received some much-needed updates. A grant from the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank was used to purchase a new two-door freezer, three-door cooler and shelving. The new appliances and shelves help create a more welcoming space, drawing in more visitors, and can store much more food than before.
“We’re grateful for this grant,” Thomas said. “We’ll now be able to accommodate larger orders from the food bank.”
“It makes a huge difference,” Nussbaum said.
The organizers say they have some ideas for future grant requests, which might include funding for hygiene products and signage.
For more information about the Free Food Room and ways to help out, contact: brian.burkholder@emu.edu, celeste.thomas@emu.edu, or trina.nussbaum@emu.edu
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