Campus Kitchen on wheels
UGA will feed extra native residents this fall with its new trailer
The College of Georgia’s Campus Kitchen trailer rolled into north Athens final month, bringing meals, details about obtainable assets and a little bit of festivity to the Fowler Drive neighborhood simply as Athens-Clarke County college students returned to highschool.
The primary occasion, a neighborhood assets honest, promoted wholesome consuming and dwelling. Native organizations had been available to speak to residents about WIC, SNAP and the Athens Space Diaper Financial institution, packages designed to learn low-income households. UGA Campus Kitchen scholar volunteers and employees additionally served everybody a wholesome spaghetti dinner.
The Campus Kitchen trailer on the Fowler Drive Elementary Open Home. Pupil volunteers and CK Director Andie Bisceglia serve wholesome milkshakes and to-go dinners. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
On the subsequent cease, a back-to-school occasion at Fowler Drive Elementary, Campus Kitchen supplied smoothies and despatched everybody residence with a meal ready earlier that day.
For some within the neighborhood, it was the primary time that they had heard of Campus Kitchen, a program out of the Workplace of Service-Studying, which stories to the UGA vice presidents for instruction and for public service and outreach.
“It’s nice that there’s a service like this that helps households,” mentioned Dollie Miller, mother to a fourth grade scholar at Fowler Drive Elementary College. “There are such a lot of households, grandparents on the market that want the assistance. It’s nice that y’all will probably be popping out extra.”
The Campus Kitchen trailer shares meals and recipes on the Wholesome Consuming occasion at Central Baptist Church organized by Household Connection-Communities in Faculties. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
The trailer permits scholar volunteers to have extra face-to-face contact with the folks they serve, mentioned Sarah Rucker, a grasp’s scholar in panorama structure from Fairburn, Georgia.
“This manner I feel that there will probably be extra of an opportunity to speak with folks and listen to what they want us for and the place,” mentioned Rucker, who will oversee neighborhood outreach utilizing the meals trailer this 12 months.
The Fowler Drive occasions took place throughout a brainstorm session with Patrick Howard, a board member of Household Connection-Communities in Faculties of Athens.
The Campus Kitchen trailer shares meals and recipes on the Wholesome Consuming occasion at Central Baptist Church organized by Household Connection-Communities in Faculties. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
“How are you going to mix attempting to show folks to consuming higher, how they’ll eat higher and other ways of consuming higher? Howard mentioned the group mentioned. “That’s the place the meals trailer comes into play. It offers us a chance to do all of that by partnerships the place we will expose folks to a meal they’ll style, the best way to put together it after which join them to assets.”
Campus Kitchen has primarily served meals insecure households within the Athens space, a lot of them a part of the Athens Group Council on Getting old’s Grandparents Feeding Grandchildren program.
Pupil staff and volunteers usually put together sizzling meals and pack baggage of contemporary produce and wholesome groceries to ship to households weekly. The trailer will complement that service.
(Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
“The trailer brings this meals truck, festive ambiance,” mentioned Campus Kitchen Coordinator Andie Bisceglia. “It makes an inviting area for folks to return to neighborhood occasions, get assets and have the ability to feed their household.”
Bisceglia and Rucker produce other new concepts involving the trailer, corresponding to cooking meals on website for folks on the Benefit Homeless Day Heart on North Avenue and utilizing it for on-site meal preparation at UGArden.
“Campus Kitchen is absolutely attempting to present again and pour again into the neighborhood that the college is part of,” Howard mentioned. “They’re not simply present in the neighborhood, however they’re an energetic a part of it.”
