CKUVM isn't always this proper. They know how to break it down.

We’ve seen some truly outstanding feats of cinema. Among them: the Campus Kitchen at Johns Hopkins University’s old time parody on walking, talking vegetables and the truly unforgettable I’m on a Stove (not I’m on a Boat) from the Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga University.

Thanks to the Davis Center’s Service Leadership and Civic Engagement Programs at the Campus Kitchen at University of Vermont, and the styling vocals of the student center staff (including the Campus Kitchen’s very own Sarah Heim), another Campus Kitchen video has joined the ranks of parody stardom: We’re Bringing Service Back (Justin Timberlake style).

While the video highlights all programs associated with Service Leadership and Civic Engagement, the Campus Kitchen is front and center as students “Take it to the food shelf.” Don’t understand what that means? Watch for yourself.

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The Princeton Review recognized that more and more high school seniors choose their colleges based on how environmentally conscious they are. Of those surveyed, 24 percent of students said that a college’s commitment to the environment would “very much” impact their college decision. This gave the university ratings company reason to devise a method for evaluating a schools greenness, using campus commitment to sustainability, the degree of environmental academics, and efforts to reduce a school’s carbon footprint in the future.

Campus Kitchens are the poster child for campus sustainability, environmental service learning, and reducing waste on campus, so it’s no surprise that eleven of 26 kitchens were deemed among the 268 Greenest Colleges in America.

CK Coordinators show of their new, more efficient (green!) kitchen at Gettysburg, during their Earth Day event

So what makes campuses “green”? Aside from having a Campus Kitchen?  Some of the things The Princeton Review sited are: availability of locally grown food, green buildings on campus, formal committees on sustainability, environmental degrees, biodegradable containers, and alternative modes of transport on campus.

Below is a list of the eleven current Campus Kitchens to make the cut. Three more likely Campus Kitchens in Fall 2010 also made the list: Elon College, Louisiana State University, and Tulane University.

College of William and Mary

Gettysburg College

Johns Hopkins University

Marquette University

St. Lawrence University

Union College

University of Florida

University of Massachusetts Boston

University of Vermont

University of Virginia

Wake Forest University

It’s not easy being green.

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The coordinators at CKUVM aren’t confused; it’s just that the Campus Kitchen has done such a good job integrating themselves into the community, the hunger relief efforts in Burlington and by CKUVM are the same.

AmeriCorps *VISTA Coordinator “Mama” Sarah Heim has integrated herself into the food culture of the community.  She shops at the local food co-op where customers can spoon fresh, natural almond butter into jars.  Her time spent perusing local foods at the co-op informs the creative food programming she offers to forge a connection between students and where their food comes from. “Mama” Sarah holds several yogurt culture growing and butter-making workshops for Campus Kitchen students throughout the year.

fill your own olive oil at the Burlington Co-op

Head down the road from the co-op to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, and witness where the majority of cooking operations by the Campus Kitchen take place. The local food bank, soup kitchen, and largest direct service emergency food provider in Vermont (they serve one hot meal per day) hosts CKUVM students weekly as they cook for and serve food bank customers. CKUVM students helped paint murals in the community dining area and are free to use a range of professional cookware in the newly outfitted kitchen. The partnership between the Campus Kitchen and the Food Shelf recently brought both organizations a shared $25,000 in nutrition education funding through the Newman’s Own  Campus Community Service Challenge.

A range of tools to use for cooking at Chittenden

Professional Grade Ovens at Chittenden

Closer to campus, the Intervale Center anchors the Burlington agricultural community, and the majority of fresh produce that CKUVM students glean, can, freeze, and preserve during Vermont’s plentiful summer months. The Intervale Center preserves and manages 350 acres of land in Burlington to provide depth to the amount of sustainable, local foods the community can access by providing plots for startup farms. A heaping compost project sits at one end of the farm, but for other unused produce that cannot be sold before going bad, the project invites the Campus Kitchen to glean excess.

Heim says the kitchen gets a wider variety of produce than she could ever imagine from Intervale, as she carries a flat of applesauce jars (canned the past summer) into the Campus Kitchen office. Their students are finishing a prep shift for tomorrow’s Chittenden Food Shelf service. They are devising a cobbler-like dessert using applesauce, frozen fruit, jam, oats, butter and sugar. Many of the non-perishables are donated from UVM dining services, Sodexo, which is also a major donor to The Campus Kitchens Project. Students pack freezer bags with necessary ingredients and a recipe to guide tomorrow’s volunteers.

CKUVM keeps a stockpile of frozen goods in the Sodexo freezers

UVM students finish off their prep shift

Just up the hill from the kitchen, the university’s Davis Center – an environmentally-centered student union with a strong message of social justice – will house the new office of the Campus Kitchen, helping CKUVM become a fixture in a community where its already so deeply saturated.

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As he wrote in a recent blog post: “People rarely starve or suffer from severe malnutrition but a large number of people, more than 49 million according to the USDA, are “food insecure,” meaning that they don’t have enough food to live a healthy, active lifestyle.”

To bring awareness to the issue, Sayles and the Vermont Foodbank host their own Hunger Conference April 27 in Burlington, VT.

The event begins with a morning session for people who operate food shelves, feeding sites, shelters, childcare centers, and senior programs – all partners of the Vermont Food Bank. In the afternoon, however, the food bank invites the general public for a keynote speech by the executive director of the Coalition Against Hunger, Joel Berg, and an afternoon of discussion led by Berg.

The conference fits snugly with the mission and values of the Campus Kitchens Project. For all nearby Campus Kitchens looking for a Spring field trip (and some great Burlington food), leave the hairnets behind and go!

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Washington, D.C. – This spring is particularly green for The Campus Kitchens Project (CKP) across the country with March bringing new funding, inaugural greenhouse crops and milestone events such as 50,000 meals served.

In 25 cities, CKP partners with high schools, colleges and universities to share on-campus kitchen space, recover unused food from cafeterias, work with local farms and community gardens for produce and engage students as volunteers who plan menus, prepare and deliver meals to the community. Below are “Green” Spring examples from three cities:

• The Campus Kitchen at the University of Vermont won $25,000 from the Newman’s Own Foundation in recognition of their work to alleviate hunger in the Burlington area. Funds will be used to support the Kitchen’s nutrition and gleaning programs, expand its community outreach and nutrition education classes, and supplement operational expenses at The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, which has seen a 20 percent increase in demand for services.

• Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., will celebrate their Campus Kitchen’s 50,000th meal on March 20. Commemorating this important milestone, the Kitchen will host a 5K run on campus. Each decimeter of the run represents a meal prepared and served by student volunteers.

• On March 22, the Campus Kitchen at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., will host a ribbon cutting and planting ceremony at their new community greenhouse. Kitchen volunteers will be joined by Gonzaga’s President, Dr. Thayne McCulloh, members of the City of Spokane City Council, and local students from Garry Middle School to plant a sustainable, organic garden in the greenhouse that will provide fresh produce for the Kitchens’ meals.

To see what’s happening on a campus near you, visit www.campuskitchens.org.

Now in its ninth year, CKP operates on almost 30 college and high school campuses, providing meals to individuals and families in their communities. Students drive all phases of operations from preparing and delivering nutritious meals to those in need, to the development of funds that maintain and grow the program.

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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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CKUVM Students Pose at a Mardi Gras Celebration

One Campus Kitchen will get more than salad dressing from Newman’s Own this March: The Newman’s Own Foundation is granting 5 to 25 thousand for one standout, do-good organization per campus in the America East Conference.

The Foundation partnered with the America East Conference to choose one leading, service-focused student group – that is closely affiliated with a non-profit – at each member university. Other nominees include University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Project Health, which connects low-income patients and their families with resources they need to be healthy and University of Albany’s Students of Albany Against Cancer, which raises awareness for early cancer prevention and detection.

Participants from the nine schools in the conference will be evaluated on the level of the group’s involvement with an affiliated non-profit as well as the degree it reflects Paul Newman’s spirit of creativity and commitment. Judges will also consider mission and programs, and the impact the grant money will have on the populations served.

The Campus Kitchen at the University of Vermont was nominated in connection with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf and the grant would help fund gleaning and nutrition programs.

One student group will receive a grant of $25,000, $15,000, and $10,000, and six will get $5000. The Campus Kitchen is among the three finalists to receive between 10 and 25 thousand. Grant recipients will be profiled throughout America East’s men’s and women’s basketball championships at the University of Hartford, March 4-7.

The Campus Kitchen at University of Vermont’s volunteers are keeping their spoons crossed to win the grand prize of $25,000 in an awards ceremony March 7!

CKUVM on the Local News

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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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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 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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