The Buff Pantry seeks to support students facing food insecurity

Food assistance is an important method of providing necessary resources to society and one that is trying to be destigmatized by members of the Volunteer Resource Center (VRC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Providing food to people that may not be receiving the proper nourishment continues to help fuel our world. 

VRC members saw a growing need for food assistance at the start of the pandemic. This was because many people were being laid off from their jobs and had less money to spend on groceries.Their student staff raised concerns about when fellow students would eat their next meal, or if they would go without food for a number of days. 

With the world around us continuing to face challenges, Hannah Wilks, the director of the VRC, and other members decided to use money that would have previously been allocated for the Alternative Breaks program – service trips that were cancelled this year because of the safety risks – and opened up a food pantry on campus, The Buff Pantry. 

While the Buff Pantry is new itself, a committee of dedicated students and staff have been working since 2016 to address food insecurity at CU. The Buff Pantry is under an umbrella program called Feed the Stampede, which is a program for all food assistance initiatives and includes things like Food Drives, Swipe it Forward, the Buff Pantry and Mobile Food Pantries. 

The Buff Pantry is located on the first floor of the University Memorial Center, next to Jamba Juice. The Pantry is open two days a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays. During these days, students can sign up to come and grab food. On Thursdays, they hold walk-up hours, where students can receive a bag of food if they didn’t have a chance to sign up. 

The Mobile Food Pantry also hands out food outside the Wolf Law building on Wednesdays from 3-5 p.m. They offer food to students, faculty and staff either through a drive-up or a walk-up. These programs are possible because of a Partner Agency Agreement between CU Boulder and Community Food Share. 

Wilks informs us that, “over the summer we operated nine different mobile food pantries and served 1,774 students among those nine pantries. Overall, there were over 3,000 people that got food as well.”

The pantry provided an estimate of 77,000 pounds of food over the summer in those events. As they continue their work, 313 students received food in September, and currently, almost 400 students have registered to pick up meals, according to Wilks. 

Wilks explains, “we have to make accessing resources not feel shameful in our larger culture.”

Johnny Hultzapple, a Feed the Stampede Assistant, iterates that, “It’s the people who sit right next to us in our classes or the person that we zoom in on in our classes. It’s professors; it’s grad students; it’s faculty and staff. Anyone can struggle with food insecurity, especially due to COVID.”

The pandemic directly impacted unemployment in this country, and the chain reaction created a negative impact on the amount of people in need of proper access to food. 

According to Hultzapple, “there is already a great need for food assistance in our community. But, due to COVID, lots of people have lost their jobs, whether that be on campus or off-campus. Because of that, people who have never needed food assistance before are now needing food assistance. The people who already needed food assistance are needing even more food assistance now. Also, it poses a bigger risk for people to go to grocery stores and get food in that way as well.”

This pandemic has hit vulnerable populations especially hard. Many minority populations did not have the necessary support to function in a normal world, and having to survive each day in a pandemic has made it even harder. 

Hultzapple tells us that, “there’s communities that are already marginalized, that already have a hard time accessing healthy food or food in general that are having an even harder time now due to COVID. The most vulnerable of our society are the most vulnerable to the virus because they don’t have the right access to resources.”

According to CU data statistics, about 47% of the students using food assistance resources on campus were students of color. About 66.4% of CU Boulder’s student population identify as White. Collectively, 26.3% of the student population identify as either American Indian, Asian American, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino or Pacific Islander. The other 7.3% identify as either International or Unknown. These statistics are representative of the fall 2020 enrollment. 

This does not only impact the person that we may see as the “average student.” Many people that are utilizing these food pantries are feeding more than one person. According to Wilks, “Many of the students that are coming are not only just feeding themselves, but are helping to feed their roommates or families. We have about 45% of the attendees as graduate students and a fair number of those are feeding between two to three other people in their household with that food.” 

Other external organizations, like Harvest of Hope, a local food pantry in Boulder providing enriching foods to a vulnerable population, have had their doors open since 2012. Due to their longstanding support with partners in the community, Harvest of Hope is able to offer food to anyone in the public through a personalized shopping experience. This allows participants to choose specific foods to eat in order to minimize waste while also normalizing the experience for the shoppers. 

“Rather than us trying to do everything for people, we offer food and we want to be a steady, stable, consistent space for people to access food in a way that feels dignified and supported,” said Riley Bright, the executive director of the Harvest of Hope Pantry. “And then, what we want to do is connect people to other resources as they identify them.”

Bright also emphasizes that, “Most people like to help other people. When you’re on the other side of needing help, it’s humbling. That’s one of the reasons that we work really hard to feed everyone who comes through our door, because just getting to our door can be a huge effort for people mentally and physically.”

How to Get Involved: 

Feed The Stampede and other food assistance organizations are still wanting to find ways to continue growing and receiving support from the community along with more funding opportunities. These include moving into a larger space and receiving grants so that they can continue to support more people. 

You can help community organizations like Harvest of Hope by volunteering at their volunteer shifts, donating food or funds, doing outreach to the community or getting involved in bigger systemic conversations at board meetings. You can also help with the efforts on our own school campus by visiting and supporting the website, providing monetary donations if we are able, hosting a food drive by yourself, with a group or with an organization and giving even a one-time donation. 

Ultimately, it is hard enough to be living through a pandemic. It is even harder for people that are struggling to meet their basic needs. It can be hard for someone to continue to succeed if they are constantly worrying about where they are going to get their next meal. That is why we cannot ignore this issue. 

In order for society and universities to function better, it is important to dig deep into the roots of the system to determine what is causing this widespread problem of food insecurity and figure out how it can be solved. Wilks states, “I don’t want to normalize that students should have to have food resources because that means that there’s some systemic issue that we’re really not addressing effectively as a country, as a college or university, as a community. I think there’s so much work that needs to be done on that to break that down.” 

If someone you know has been suffering from food insecurity, let that person know you support them and direct them to these organizations. If you need help, fill out this form and receive the help that you need.