Campus Kitchens Project launches at Shenandoah

Shenandoah University on Monday joined The Campus Kitchens Project, the leading national nonprofit empowering students to fight hunger and food waste, with the launch of its own Campus Kitchen.

By collecting surplus food from the on-campus dining facility and developing partnerships with local social service agencies, the student-led organization will turn this unused food into healthy meals for those in need. With the launch of the program, the Campus Kitchen at Shenandoah will become the 59th Campus Kitchen to join the national network and the 14th school to focus its efforts on fighting rural hunger. The Campus Kitchen at Shenandoah is supported by a grant from CoBank, a national cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America.

At Campus Kitchens across the country, students lead efforts to combat food waste and hunger by transforming surplus food from dining halls, community gardens, restaurants, and grocery stores into healthy meals. The Campus Kitchen at Shenandoah is sponsored by the school’s Center for Public Service & Scholarship.

With support from the school’s dining services provider, Sodexo, the Campus Kitchen at Shenandoah will begin operations by conducting food recovery and cooking shifts in the Allen Dining Hall and delivering meals to the Congregational Community Action Project twice a week.

“I cannot contain my enthusiasm to finally start Campus Kitchen at Shenandoah,” said junior healthcare management major Shelby Ellis ’18, who is the student leader for the project. “This project has been in the making since the spring semester of 2015, and all of us here at Shenandoah are looking forward to identifying solutions for food insecurity in our community.”

In the last academic year, student volunteers with The Campus Kitchens Project recovered more than 1.3 million pounds of wasted food and served nearly 350,000 meals to those in need. Student volunteers with the national organization also work to promote sustainable solutions to address hunger and food insecurity in their communities.