Like many college campuses across the nation, Emmanuel College faces the problem of food insecurity – the infrequent access to nutritious food – within its student body. In order to begin addressing this issue, a collaboration of students, faculty and staff have developed the Swipe-It-Forward program. This program enables students, faculty and staff to “donate” meals, making them available for students in need.
Students can donate up to a predetermined number of meal swipes from their own meal plans, while faculty and staff may make monetary donations to an online “bank”. Students who self-identify as food insecure may request up to 5 meal swipes from this bank per semester, which may be spent at any Bon Appetit operation at Emmanuel College that accepts meal swipes.
This program is not a final solution for food insecurity. Conversations need to be had about more sustainable and effective solutions for extreme food insecurity, but this is something that Emmanuel College is doing right now to provide relief to students and to seriously address the issue.
