What we didn’t expect: watching student-led Campus Kitchens take the lead in partnering with farmers markets to bring fresher food to those who can’t afford it.

More Campus Kitchens are committed to working with farmers markets than ever. This new farmers market drive came just in time for United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to proclaim August 7 – 13, 2011 National Farmers Market Week.

Over the past 11 years, since the USDA first announced a week celebrating the direct farmer to consumer passage of food, the number of farmers markets has grown 150 percent.

The Farmers Market Coalition Website reports: “As these numbers increase, farmers markets are bolstering local economies, improving community health, and bringing diverse groups of people together in a shared social space.”

Campus Kitchens recognize this value and make farmers markets a regular part of their summer programming.

The Campus Kitchen team at Augsburg College recently kicked off its third year of hosting its own farmers markets, both on-campus and off. Students invite a local population of Hmong farmers to sell at the markets in addition to manning a campus-run booth; dually bolstering the local economy and nutrition.

Adams County Fresh Farm Markets

At Gettysburg College, the Campus Kitchen recently strengthened its relationship with the Adams County Fresh Farm Markets through its innovative Fair Share Project, which used CSA donations to help fund a farmers market voucher program for individuals who did not quite qualify for food stamps, but could not afford fresh food.

One of the newest Campus Kitchens at Kent State University recently began a partnership with Haymaker Farmers Markets, a local food powerhouse that immediately began donating unsold food like sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes, and fresh herbs for inclusion in cooked-from-scratch meals, served to Kent Social Services.

Other Campus Kitchens are also just starting or hard at work cultivating relationships with farmers markets including: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, University of Virginia, and Gonzaga College High School.

Does your Campus Kitchen work with farmers markets? Share your story in the comments section below.

A big thank you from The Campus Kitchens Project for all those farmers market people who take the time to partner with our Campus Kitchens!

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Campus Kitchen Coordinator Brian Noy helped devise a plan Monday morning after the storms hit: Augsburg’s Sabo Center (the service office where the Campus Kitchen is housed) would lead two clean-up trips to North Minneapolis, a sandwich-making shift, and look for further opportunities to serve meals in evenings.

Abbie Steiner

Wednesday morning, Noy and his team led volunteers on campus through a production line, spreading and wrapping 1,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (with donations from New French Bakery) in under two hours. From there, the Campus Kitchen immediately shipped out sandwiches with volunteers heading to North Minneapolis as a cleanup crew.

Cleanup crews planned to work Wednesday, May 25, and Thursday, May 26, from noon to 4 p.m.

Sunday brought at least three tornado touchdowns to the metro area, injuring 30, killing one person, and knocking out power for thousands, leading to school closings and a curfew imposed on North Minneapolis. City officials plan to assess damage Thursday and Friday, but many without power are still seeking assistance. A Disaster Recovery Center at a local park counted 1,200 in line for help Wednesday.

Campus Kitchen volunteers showed up while people stood in that line Wednesday to distribute the 1,000 sandwiches. Today, the team plans to head to the Neighborhood Hub to serve lunch, and then go door to door, making sure residents have all they need.

The clip below from a local TV news station shows the Disaster Recovery Center where Augsburg College volunteers served. As relief efforts continue, the Campus Kitchen is looking for more ways to serve those affected by the damage. Stay up-to-date on relief efforts by liking the Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College on Facebook. Contact campuskitchen@augsburg.edu for more information on how to help.

This effort comes on the heels of another inspiring disaster relief effort in Tennessee, organized by volunteers at the Campus Kitchen at Lee University.

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Thanks to the work of 28 Campus Kitchens and a swelling volunteer force this November, hungry individuals and families will gobble up Thanksgiving meals with all the trimmings this Turkey Day.

Turkeypalooza is the network-wide effort of The Campus Kitchens Project to ensure all mouths are fed during the month that many Americans share bountiful meals. This year, Campus Kitchens new and old will ready their carving knives, running canned food drives, take your turkey to work day, special meal preparation, turkey basket making, and community feasts for a days of deliciousness, and too much tryptophan.

The Campus Kitchen at St. Louis University will help kick off Turkeypalooza with events beginning November 12 with a “Take your Turkey to Work Day”. The day allows student groups, faculty and staff from different departments the chance to provide the most important part of the Turkey Day meal. Volunteers are also collecting canned goods, which will supply as many as 600 hungry people with meals in the St. Louis area.

Some Campus Kitchens are offering clients more than the meal. In addition to prepping turkey with all the trimming to be served on Thanksgiving, the Campus Kitchen at Minnesota State University, Mankato will distribute grocery bags, they’ll host a unique fundraiser to serve the community two-fold. Volunteers can donate funds and decorate a special Thanksgiving card.

Other kitchens, like the Campus Kitchen at University of Nebraska Kearney, will celebrate the holiday by serving double portions of mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, fresh rolls, stuffing and turkey to their community partners. Using the meal as an awareness building tool, the Campus Kitchen will make special decorations to include in the meal with hunger and food insecurity facts.

Several other Campus Kitchens will hold community dinner-style Turkeypalooza events, from a city-wide meal in Cleveland Tenn. to five different meal services in November at Augsburg College.

For more information on Turkeypalooza events or how to get involved, please view and click through the calendar below.

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Local news coverage of Hungry for Justice: Social, Economic, Environmental

The Campus Kitchens Project national office team arrived home Sunday, October 10 from three whirlwind days at Hungry for Justice: Social, Economic, Environmental in Waco, TX bearing new vintage boots, belt buckles – and a better understanding what gets the national network of Campus Kitchens fired up, cooking, and serving their communities.

The packed-full days of sustainable gear (think awesome Kianga Project bracelets and recycled binders), networking, and the cross-pollination of knowledge left all participants with a few more sustainable seeds of ideas. As many told us in the closing remarks; they can’t wait to go back to their Campus Kitchens or hometowns, plant them, and see what grows.

More than ever before, conference participants helped with covering the conference through various e-tools, and crowd-sourced perspectives on The Poverty Summit we would have never caught ourselves.

The Campus Kitchens Project blog will soon host a media page from the conference with pictures, videos, links, and other resources for participants to continue connections, and watch their ideas flourish.

Keep things flowing until then by reading through more than 65 tweets generated during the conference in conversation #HungryforJustice. Then get a taste of some of the great crowd-sourced coverage by viewing the pictures and video below.

Kyle Hinch, AmeriCorps VISTA at the Campus Kitchen at Lee University, brought his tireless excitement for expansion of programs with his Campus Kitchen to the conference and presented about Lee University’s on-campus food bank.

CKBU helped those Hungry for Justice by delivering nearly 300 boxed lunches leftover from two days of sessions to The Salvation Army

Juliette Rorie from the Campus Kitchen at UMass Boston tells us why the human trafficking session enlightened her about what’s being done – not just in big cities, but way down in Texas.

A look inside a Breakout Session at Hungry for Justice

Mo from the Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College came to present on her on-campus cooking classes, and left with new ideas to implement at her Campus Kitchen.

View of the panel discussion at Hungry for Justice

Stay-tuned for more coverage – or catch more on our USTREAM Channel

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Volunteering is undergoing its greatest spike in six years, up 1.6 million new Americans over last year, according to the Corporation for National & Community Service’s report released today, June 15.

The annual Volunteering in America report found that more than 63.4 million Americans volunteered for more than 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service, saving the United States an estimated $169 billion.

The report comes at a fitting time for Campus Kitchens, as this past year, The Campus Kitchen Projects volunteer force grew more than ever with the addition of six new kitchens at the start of the Spring 2010 semester. The report assessed Americans aged 16 and older.

Some other notable findings in the Volunteering in America Report:

• Minneapolis-St. Paul, where the Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College is located, ranked number one among large cities in rate of citizens volunteering.
• Women again volunteered at a higher rate than men.
• Working mothers have the highest volunteer rate among women.
• Factors that lower volunteer rates: multi-unit housing, poverty rates, longer commuting times.

And for those looking to volunteer beyond the Campus Kitchen, or looking for a Campus Kitchen in the area, don’t forget the Corporation launched a web site, Serve.gov, last summer, linking volunteers to opportunities in their zip codes.

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The Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College hosts its own farmers market in the summer from the yield it produces in its community garden, plus two or three vegetable growers, part of the prominent Hmong community  in the Twin Cities area, where Augsburg is located. Augsburg is also a CSA drop off site.

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In 2009, 3.16 million college students performed more than 300 million hours of service.

From those numbers, six colleges and universities have been named as Presidential Awardees in the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement.

One Campus Kitchen site, Lee University in Cleveland, TN, was named among the six Presidential Awardees. Lee students completed more than 60,000 hours of volunteer service last year in projects aimed at poverty relief, food collection and distribution, and helping students with autism and other developmental disabilities. More than 80 percent of Lee’s students are involved in volunteering and service-learning.

“CKP is a huge support of our [Lee University's] benevolence arm. Thanks for all your work toward establishing CKLee,” said William B. Lamb, Director of Field Experiences for the Leonard Center at Lee University.

Two additional Honor Roll lists included colleges and universities that also house or are developing a Campus Kitchen as part of their community service portfolio.

The Honor Roll with Distinction includes:
Augsburg College
Saint Louis University
Union College
College of William and Mary
University of Wisconsin Eau Claire
Tulane University*
College of the Holy Cross*
Elon University*

The Honor Roll includes:
University of Florida
University of Massachusetts Boston
Washington University in St. Louis
East Carolina University
Wake Forest University
University of Vermont
University of Virginia
Gonzaga University
Marquette University
University of Detroit Mercy*

*Universities that are currently working with CKP to develop Campus Kitchens.

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This will be an exciting time for many Campus Kitchens who already have or are starting campus/community gardens. Come Spring, the Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest University will be using their MLK Day grant money to start up three community gardens in their area. Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA have received a donated greenhouse and students will begin tilling the garden in Spring.

Several other Campus Kitchens including Washington and Lee, Augsburg, Gettysburg, and Vermont will continue established community gardens – and could offer a few pointers for Campus Kitchens interested in starting one too.

We challenge you green thumbs out there to try to make your garden (and kitchen) more sustainable by composting your kitchen scraps and using that golden mixture to make your garden grow! Not only will this help to reduce the volume of trash produced in your kitchen, but it will also save you the cost of buying fertilizer while adding much-needed nutrients to the soil on your campus.

Check out this great website for specific details on how to get a compost pile started.

And, a word from the EPA (This link provides info on composting programs in your area and laws surrounding composting in your city.)

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The Campus Kitchens Project came to my campus during my first year of college.  I knew very little about the program, but it sounded interesting – so I got involved.

I found myself in the middle of a fledgling organization, learning all about organizational development, promoting a new program, fostering connections between community organizations, and utilizing the skills of community members and students.
While working with CKP, I also served in different capacities and on different shifts.  During those shifts, I heard the stories of our community.  I heard from children of different cultures who had dreams, hopes and excitement about the future.   I heard from homeless and precariously housed individuals. And I learned about the many injustices and sufferings they boldly face each day.
During my time with Campus Kitchens, I became friends with many of the fellow shift leaders.  I learned about how to more effectively lead groups and make people feel involved in a process.  We engaged in educational activities, leading “Hunger 101” where we simulated the processes/experiences of those experiencing hunger and navigating the social service system. I became more informed about the systems around me and the hardships experienced by those trying to navigate such realities.

Simply, these are a few of the many life-altering experiences I had during college with the Campus Kitchens Project. I can’t think of one particular moment, but the Campus Kitchen’s emphasis on eating with people instead of simply serving them helped me to consider how I could do likewise in my own efforts.  I also learned a great deal about the importance of including a variety of talents within a group.

After college I worked as a Volunteer Coordinator for an organization that provides services with the Latino Community of the Twin Cities.  I utilized many of the relationship building, organizing and planning skills I obtained in my time with the Campus Kitchens Project.  Currently, I am a seminary student preparing to be a pastor.

I am so grateful for the opportunities I had to learn about leadership, empowering others, the importance of community and the value of “seeing” and working to “hear” all those who reside in our neighborhoods- students, immigrants, the homeless, the wealthy, the elderly, children … everyone.

Interested in finding out more about receiving $5000 for a Sodexo scholarship, and $5000 for your own Campus Kitchen? Read more here.

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 The conference got underway Friday morning and, might I say, was a huge success. The whole weekend was catered by the amazing Fresh Start catering program through DC Central Kitchen. At the conference, students got to hear from many guest speakers and gained valuble tips and insights from them, as well as from fellow attendees. Topics at the conference included: fundraising, local food, nutrition, grant writing, community relationships, social media, leadership, and nonprofit professionalism. The conference came to a close on Saturday evening at a delicious local restaurant, Busboys and Poets. DCCK/CKP founder, Robert Egger, gave the closing speech and left the students and staff with a renewed sense of purpose.

The CKP staff would like to thank everyone who attended the conference as well as our awesome speakers and the generous donors and sponsors who made it all possible! Another successful conference as we enter into ‘Our New Millennium’…

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