Campus Kitchens are not just student service clubs, but active, essential members of their communities. That means that even when school is out for the summer, Campus Kitchens are still making meals happen.

Keeping your Campus Kitchen going through the summer poses serious challenges: dining halls have fewer leftovers or none at all and having fewer students on campus means difficulty recruiting volunteers.

Straight from Program Directors Erin and Ariel, here are 5 tips for running smooth summer ops.

1) Now is the best time to eat local! The Campus Kitchen at the University of Nebraska-Kearney and the Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg College are both working with local farmer’s markets to collect their leftover produce. The fruits of labor from community gardens help supplement meals at the Campus Kitchens at Augsburg College and the University of Vermont.

2) Get out and glean! Volunteers at several Campus Kitchens will spend time in farmer’s fields this summer picking the usable produce left over after harvest. I spoke with Garrett of the Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network last week, who told me that sometimes as much as 90% of a farmer’s harvest is left in the fields!

3) Freeze stuff. Do it now.

4) Summer is a great time to strengthen relationships with clients. On delivery shifts, encourage volunteers to spend some extra time talking about the heat or the baseball game with their clients. When they’re not rushing home to finish problem sets or start a research paper, volunteers have a chance to listen and to learn from the people they serve.

5) Get creative with volunteer recruitment. The Campus Kitchen at Johns Hopkins University is partnering with the Summer Scholars program, a group of incoming freshmen who are arriving on campus early, while the Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee has invited some of their clients to get involved with volunteer shifts. And there’s always Rotary or Kiwanis clubs, plus churches and other religious organizations.

What do you do at your Campus Kitchen to keep it rolling through the summer months?

Post to Twitter