Chippewa Valley Times

The food recovery program, initiated in the fall of 2024, has been offering repackaged meals to students through the Campus Harvest Food Pantry. The meals are frozen and available for free to those in need. This initiative is a joint effort by the Administrative Office of Sustainability, Student Office of Sustainability, University Centers, Sodexo food services, and the Campus Harvest Food Pantry.

Kristen O’Brien, an intern with the Administrative Office of Sustainability who played a key role in launching the program, emphasized its importance. “This is good, quality food and our college — similar to many universities around the country — have students who face food insecurity,” she said. “When students have good, nutritious, free food it helps their wellbeing and their academics because students can’t fully function on an empty stomach.”

O’Brien collaborates with John Arnold from University Centers to repackage surplus food at Hilltop Center. During the fall semester alone, approximately 600 meals were repackaged and quickly collected by students at the pantry. Dr. Sarah Snyder highlighted this option as vital for addressing student food insecurity: “These heat-and-eat meals are very popular among our busy students and they really don’t stay in the freezer long,” she noted.

Snyder praised the student-led nature of this initiative: “This was an entirely student-led initiative and I’m so proud of our students for their creative thinking and dedication to the environment and their peers.”

The program follows a model used at UW-Madison where uneaten prepared foods are repurposed for those facing hunger issues. O’Brien aims to expand volunteer involvement during spring semester efforts at Hilltop and Davies Center: “The more volunteers we have, the more packaging we can do,” she explained.

A new Free Food Alert program will launch this spring to notify students about leftover catered event food availability. Faculty hosting events will alert participating students via push notifications or emails.

Lily Strehlow expressed enthusiasm for this development: “I think the Free Food Alert program is a long time coming to UWEC... It is exciting to find a program which provides the ability to send out this type of notification efficiently while maintaining food safety standards;” she remarked.

Both programs aim not only to support low-income or food-insecure students but also reduce campus-wide food waste.

Students interested in receiving alerts can register on Free Food Alert's website while faculty must complete training after signing up on its host page.