Grub Hub Food Pantry

So I’m Cassidy Arndt. I am the vice president and also kind of the treasurer at Grub Hub. One of our main slogans is students working for students. Students helping students.

The Grub Hub was abled through faculty sponsorship to recognize how homelessness and how food insecurity affect our student population and really concert an effort to build the Grub Hub to what it is today. We offer food every day of the week. We offer free food to all of our students.

And I think that’s really cool that we’re, we are the people that also use this organization. We’re part of this community that we’re also trying to help and trying to fight that stigma of, “Am I someone that can get food assistance?” because that can be really strong, especially in college campuses, because people are often thinking that you know, food assistance is only for people that are really struggling. Like, you know, we all should have healthy diets and be able to seek help for that. There’s people that come to Grub Hub because they just need a snack before their next class. So they’re able to focus and learn and then there’s people that come because this is the food they need to prepare for dinner for their children that night. And everyone’s welcome. And we’re fighting that stigma of, “Should I be able to do this?” and saying we’re here for you all. We’re part of this, you’re part of this. It’s a whole community.

You know, it’s great to see how people are responding to our adaptations and recognizing every community on campus especially those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. We have, we have many, many donors and sponsors of what we do, where we, we partner with Care and Share Food Banks of Colorado, Manna Soup Kitchen helps us with free meals several days a week. The Durango Unitarian Church Fellowship has really helped us monetarily. Durango Natural Food Co-op has been really great about giving us fresh produce and dairy and more meat and eggs this semester. And they’re a great organization who’s, who has also helped us, the Good Food Collective, as a great organization that partners with the Manna Soup Kitchen to really give us some exposure to local farmers and, and producers to be able to buy food from Colorado farmers. Starbucks Coffee Company, and their staff has been really great about concerting a more ecological approach to sustainable food offerings. Bread bakeries here in, here in town, Jen and the team down there have just done a really great job at both locations to keep bread in our, in our house

With just for a little like numerical look at the impact we’re able to have, for the month of March, we were able to help 658 students be it through the pantry, or through grocery giveaway, different things like that. And we were able to give away over 2,500 pounds of food. And we have about 16 different sponsors that help us get the food and support that need to provide to others. We also have about 16 volunteers.

People, and organizations and businesses off campus, you can donate through through the schools, donor processes where you can get a tax write off, or you can just drop off things to, to our, our door. I think we’re, because we’re, our website’s on the school website, it’s associated schools website. You can access our contact numbers and our email addresses and talk to us about how you want to make a great impact in what we do because you know, we, we are a nonprofit organization. We are on campus here at Fort Lewis and you know, we’re looking for anybody who wants to help us, keep our doors open.

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