Peter Russ, a freshmen in Biochemistry, and Sara Hinck, a graduate student in International Development Studies, posed after they delivered several donation boxes from Grover Center to Clippinger Labs.
The Wealth and Poverty theme collected more than 20 boxes of canned and dry food items in a campus-wide food drive in October.
Building on its success last year, the theme launched its second annual fall food drive in celebration of World Food Day. World Food Day is a day of action against hunger observed on Oct 16 every year to remember the founding spirit of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
A number of Wealth and Poverty faculty and staff members helped to place donation boxes in various academic buildings across the campus, including Stocker Center by Felipe Aros-Vera of Engineering, Grover Center by Eliza Harper of Nursing, and Copeland Hall by Ike Uzuegbunam,of Business.
CAS 1300x Themes in Action & Student Volunteers
Students in CAS 1300x Themes in Action each hosted a food drive in their residence hall or apartment building. They posted World Food Day fliers in public places and emailed their friends and classmates to donate food to benefit local families who are in need.
Alexa Adams, a Social Work major, shares in her reflective essay that “I really enjoyed this assignment, even though I didn’t get as many donations as I would have liked. I think a lot of it had to do with my location of the box; The Kennedy Museum of Art is where I placed it…. Looking back I wish I had put my box somewhere else, so I could have gotten more donations.”
Students of NRSE 4150 Community Health Nursing actively promoted the food drive in Grover Center and beyond to raise several boxes of dry foods.
Sarah Baitamouni, a freshman in Biological Sciences, hosted a food drive in her University Commons apartment and encouraged her friends and neighbors to donate food.
In addition, many helped pick up boxes full of donated items.
“It takes a lot of legwork to run a campus-wide food drive. Boxes have to be distributed to as many places as possible, and, once they are filled with donations, they have to be picked up and delivered to my office in Clippinger,” said Dr. Yeong Kim, the coordinator of the Wealth and Poverty Theme. “Without those students who volunteered their services to carry heavy boxes across the campus, it would not have been possible to collect this much food. By the third week of October, my office was already overflowing with food, so I had to leave the boxes in the hallway” Kim said.
On Nov 1, a total of 22 boxes were donated to Good Works Inc., which works with Athens residents in need.
Emily Axe of Good Works wrote in her thank you card: “These donations will go to several different areas in our organization, including The Good Works Timothy House. And they will also help supplement the take-home food bags we handout during Friday Night (our weekly community meal). Again, we are grateful for this generous outreach and contribution from the Ohio University community.”
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