By Kristen Altmeyer and Victoria Wauters
Amongst circulating conversations about Quinnipiac’s dining option, Chartwells, regarding undercooked and moldy food, Chartwells and Haven’s Harvest announced their partnership, Dec. 3, 2019, to address hunger in Hamden.
“5 days a week, QU Dining will pack up excess food from the Mount Carmel cafeteria where our partner, Haven’s Harvest, has a system for putting together those with excess food with those who need food,” said Sean Duffy, professor of political science and the executive director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute at Quinnipiac. “Volunteers will transport that food from one place to another will ensure that the food is connected to community partners in Hamden.”
A view of the crowd with Quinnipiac’s new live feed of the Piazza.
Those who are hungry in Hamden are not alone, as this is a nationwide problem. Every year 40% of the nation’s food gets thrown away. That’s about 125 billion tons of food, which is the equivalent of 615 aircraft carriers of food.
In hopes to resolve this problem, Quinnipiac has made many recent partnerships with Hamden organizations like the Albert Schweitzer Institute, Haven’s Harvest and United Way. One of the biggest ways Quinnipiac has partnered with the community to prevent this issue is with a program called Be Kind, Leave your Food Behind.
“This organization creates a very large food drive at the end of the academic year during move out and students have excessive food, instead of throwing it away we collect it.” said Bethany Zemba, vice president and chief of staff at Quinnipiac University. “Last year, 5.5 tons of food was collected and donated to the local non-profits and food pantries and and over the past 12 years this initiative has collectively distributed an estimated 34 tons of food”
Bethany Zemba at the podium.
Duffy mentioned that estimates put the number of people who are food insecure in the US as high as a ⅓ of the population. Food security is often described as the ability of a household or community to satisfy its need for affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.
“There is an increasing number of those hungry in the United States. In Hamden, 39% of all households fall into the category called ALICE households,” Duffy said. “This stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed Households.
Though difficult to measure, The United Way focuses on households annual and monthly earnings and if they fall between the official poverty level in the United States and the minimal cost of living at a particular location and region.
“These are the households that are making money, but not enough to get by and so it’s quite possible that these are the households that have difficulty assessing an efficient quantity of affordable, nutritious, and culturally relevant foods,” Duffy said.
Quinnipiac plans to continue to help the hunger problem in the community, and is in the works to build a vegetable garden on campus in the spring of 2020.