This year, the Campus Kitchens Project’s Annual Conference will bore right to the heart of hunger, visiting its Baylor University site to partner with the annual BU Poverty Summit with three days of networking, entertainment, and academic thought.

Representatives of 25 Campus Kitchens, poverty scholars, and others from the Baylor community will converge in Baylor University’s Bill Daniel Center on the Waco, Texas campus to participate in sessions both poverty and CKP-themed, with a keynote address delivered by CKP/DCCK founder Robert Egger.

The conference runs from noon on Friday, October 8 to 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 10. A tentative schedule is included below.

To help round out the presentations, The Baylor University Poverty Summit and The Campus Kitchens Project have issued a Request for Proposal, calling for 75-minute presentations that address one of the following: community-building and development, engaging students in higher education to address poverty, international poverty alleviation, or hunger, poverty, and economics.

Online Applications for the call for presentations are due no later than August 13.

Ready to sign up for the conference? Go here.

Schedule:

Friday, October 8
12:00PM Boxed Lunch, Welcome (Barfield)
1:00PM CKP Breakout 1 (SUB)
2:00PM CKP Breakout 2 (SUB)
3:00PM CKP Breakout 3 (SUB)
4:00PM CKP Breakout 4 (SUB)
5:00PM CKP Breakout 5 (SUB)

7:00PM Desert Reception, Keynote Speaker: Robert Eggers (Cashion 5th)
8:00PM Exhibition Opens (Cashion 5th)

Saturday, October 9
9:00AM Keynote Speaker (Cashion 5th)
10:00AM Breakout Session 1
11:00AM Breakout Session 2
12:00PM Boxed lunch and Panel Discussion (Cashion 5th)
1:30PM Breakout Session 3
3:00PM Off-Campus Service

6:00PM Hunger Banquet (Barfield)
8:30PM Documentary on Fountain Mall

Sunday, October 10
9:30AM Closing Speaker (Cashion 5th)
11:00AM CUB or Leave

Mark your calendars now for this year's Campus Kitchens Project Conference

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World Hunger Relief will help CKBU start its farm, after helping Haiti cultivate more rice paddies.

Most Campus Kitchen farms and gardens get direction from master gardeners and local farms in their communities. Some receive expert advice from more prominent farming voices: the operators of the World Hunger Relief farm.

The Campus Kitchen at Baylor University has a unique advantage: it’s situated in Waco, Texas, the same location as the World Hunger Relief farm.

As a partner of World Hunger Relief, a sustainable agriculture training farm in Texas, and a student-led hunger relief organization, the Campus Kitchen will receive direction and support from the Hunger Farm’s creators as it begins its own Farm Project. In addition, the Hunger Farm helps with programming for CKBU’s community partners.

The Hunger Farm’s most recent effort could give CKBU a more specialized farming skill. The farm has received media attention recently for its partnership with Cornell University and a Madagascar rice specialist to improve the rice farming process in Haiti, and in turn provide international hunger relief to a country looking for economic empowerment beyond disaster.

Neil Miller of World Hunger Relief will work with the rice specialist to teach farmers the intensification-growing method in hopes that Haiti will discover a food production method sustainable enough to break free of its dependency on outside help.

The Waco, Texas climate has a lot of similarities to Haiti’s climate, according to Miller, who said Haiti gets a little more rain. The intensified system would limit the use of water by flooding fields every three to four days instead of keeping them continually flooded.

Specialized knowledge like these water conservation methods might just be the thing CKBU needs to start up its farm project. And who knows? Before long, CKBU could have its own rice paddy.

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Mark your calendars now for this year's Campus Kitchens Project Conference

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With April events nation-wide, below are Earth Day examples from three cities:

Pennsylvania: Celebrating nutritious recovery of 10 tons of food and serving its 10,000^th meal, the Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg College will host a 10 Ton event on Earth Day, April 22.  Highlighting the Kitchen’s community collaboration, 20 different relay teams will compete in a Campus Kitchen-themed relay course involving hairnets, gloves, canned foods and thermometers.  Featuring community partnerships, the event will include farmers, chefs and others discussing how they make healthy food accessible while fighting hunger, poverty and promoting the local economy.

Texas:  Students and faculty at Baylor University are teaming up to bring a sustainable garden to campus.  The Campus Kitchen at Baylor University currently tends a garden off-campus, where they are learning the skills necessary to plan, plant and maintain a vegetable garden.  Faculty partners with the Kitchen, helping to work in the garden and also conducting a Spring fundraising drive to bring the garden on-campus.

Massachusetts: On April 26^th, Boston will dedicate its first Campus Kitchen at UMass Boston.  The Kitchen, operational since February, provides almost 100 meals a week to children and their families at The Early Learning Center East.  All meals are created with unused, recycled food from dining halls, community gardens, area restaurants and community donation.

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This year, over 900 volunteers are expected to produce over 12,000 meals. Some will use MLK Day, January 18, to kick off their projects. Others will spend the days to follow launching into their semesters of service. Regardless of the timeline, we can’t wait to hear the stories of success: how a child used a computer for the first time to explore the world of nutrition, how ex-offenders discovered a passion while preparing a community meal alongside professional chefs, or how a campus kitchen implemented its first meal service shift.

What do the MLK Day grantees have to live up to? Read below for a summary of what happened last year, during CKP’s first MLK Day.

701 CKP volunteers logged over 3000 hours of service in their communities as part of the largest turnout ever for an MLK Day of Service.

We’re especially excited about the projects at our brand-new campus Kitchens at Baylor University, , University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Florida. They prepared food for community garden volunteers in Texas, deep cleaned a community table in Wisconsin, helped job seekers prepare resumes in Baltimore and served their very first CK meals in Florida.

At the University of Vermont, students renovated the dining hall at the local Food Shelf. They repainted the paneling and drew murals on three of the large panels, featuring pictures inspired by the book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.”

Inspired by Obama’s impending inauguration, new volunteers made MLK day at St. Louis University’s Campus Kitchen one to remember.

What better way to honor the 80^th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and celebrate the inauguration of our very first African-American president than to answer their call to service? What better way to define our national character than to recycle waste? What better way to satisfy our spirits than to feed the hungry?

Where were you on MLK Day 2009?

Let us know what you’re planning for MLK Day 2010!

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The family of 20 campus kitchens that make up The Campus Kitchens Project saw a lot of highs and lows, cabbage and carrots, PB&J’s and pastas, tomatoes and turkeys in 2009. The year of an ill economy, swine flue epidemic, and a healthcare overhaul also marked a period of successes for CKP.

We think 2009 was a pretty good year for The Campus Kitchens Project – and it’s all thanks to the dedicated staff, students, volunteers, and community partners who helped make hunger relief a real and growing force in each community. Together, the campus kitchens reached the million meals milestone, hung up our chef’s hats in five new kitchens, and ushered in greener and more local food movements. It’s hard to believe we accomplished so much in 2009. But what’s harder to believe? All of it was done in addition to the usual meals cooked and delivered by students each day.

The top five moments of 2009:

1. Millions Milestones: We did it. We’re millionaires. Something about the end of the decade and exponential increase of kitchens serving meals helped us reach two “millions” milestones. In May, CKP’s pounds of food recovered spilled just over the million mark. Then, in October, something more impressive: kitchens came together in Washington, D.C. (during the CKP National Leadership Conference!) to serve the millionth meal. View footage of the event here.

2. CKP became a MLK Day of Service Grantee: Campuses are great at preparing meals day in and day out, but sometimes need an extra infusion of cash and support to kick services into high gear. Enter the Corporation for National and Community Service and their MLK Day of Service grants.

The award allowed CKP to give thousands of dollars to campus kitchens and other organizations around the country. In the first year of the MLK Day grant, CKP’s group of sub-grantees gathered over 1000 volunteers to carry on the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., bridging barriers, empowering individuals, and strengthening communities. Students at the Campus Kitchen at Jacksonville University held two community barbeques in an effort to build trust between the isolated student population and their neighbors. Looking forward to MLK Day 2010, CKP will aid organizations in gathering hundreds more volunteers to work against hunger relief and provide other basic human needs.

3. Five New Campus Kitchens Open: The Campus Kitchen’s Project has seen years of growth, but none were perhaps as robust as increasing the existing kitchen fleet by one third. CKP opened five new kitchens: University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, University of Florida, Baylor University, Johns Hopkins University and Lee University in January 2009. In less than a year, each kitchen has already carved out its own niche as a valuable asset in the community, jump-starting gleaning programs, planning for culinary job training classes, becoming sole providers for community soup kitchens, and developing a strong base of student leadership. We can’t wait to see what these kitchens have in store for next year!

4. Walmart Becomes a National Partner, Fuels Expansion: In addition to the Sodexo Foundation, the initial funder and supporter of The Campus Kitchens project, the Walmart Foundation has committed $300,000 to helping CKP open up six new kitchens in the next two years. Local Walmarts have supported many kitchens through food banks in the past, but this national grant amplifies the company’s commitment to hunger relief. The first kitchen Walmart will help open: The University of Massachusetts, Boston at the end of January 2010.

5.  High School Volunteerism Program – In 2009, CKP dipped further into the fountain of youth with the creation of a program allowing high school students to work with their local university campus kitchens to deliver meals. Meanwhile, the students could log volunteer hours often needed to graduate. Two high schools in the Washington, D.C. area, one in New Orleans, and another in Boston have either shown interest or committed to the program.

Thanks again for a wonderful year. Can’t wait to see what the next one will bring!

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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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For the full article: http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4422&Itemid=53

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CKUVM students paint on MLK Day 2009

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.

In order to continue his legacy of labor that uplifts humanity, CKP will join with the Corporation for National and Community Service again this year to celebrate MLK Day 2010 as a day of service.

CKP has grants for up to $2,000 available for our affiliates and beyond. If you’ve got a project that addresses hunger issues in your community, involves underserved populations in volunteerism, and gets folks involved in sustained service, we want to fund you!

MLK Day 2009 saw volunteers at the University of Vermont’s Campus Kitchen renovating the dining hall at their local food shelf and students at Baylor University open the doors of their Campus Kitchen.   The Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg College kept the MLK Day spirit going all semester long.

Read the Request for Proposals , fill out the application, and email us (info@campuskitchens.org) if you have any questions! But don’t wait: applications are due July 10, 2009.

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