The Lexington, Va. campus celebrated the MLK Day of Service by sharing service opportunities with students and opening up the Campus Kitchen to members of The Campus Kitchens Project national staff. As a new member of the Campus Kitchens team this was my first experience in a Campus Kitchen. I was quite impressed by the leadership of the students and their understanding of service through CKWL as an influential part of their education.

CKWL gave us a tour of their kitchen and garden and allowed us to join them on a delivery shift. Their garden, almost a third of an acre, lay almost bare from the winter weather, but remnants from last years harvest show promise for the warmer months.

We went next to meet the chickens, that through a partnership with a local restaurant, help the garden thrive. There are not enough eggs for the CKWL to source for their meals, but that is not a problem since Walmart donates dozens of cartons of eggs to be sorted daily that have cracked or damaged eggs. The kitchen then brings these newly sorted eggs to the local food pantry and uses some in the kitchen.

Although student volunteers don’t get a chance to crack their own eggs, they do make basil chicken and salsa using frozen tomatoes and basil they processed over the summer.

Later, we tagged along on a delivery shift and saw some of the partnerships that CKWL has created. The food pantry receives donations from food the Campus Kitchen provides and in return recommends individuals to receive meals. We made delivery to a man staying at a hotel with support from the food pantry.

To cap off Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s day of service, the Campus Kitchen held an open house to raise awareness about the service opportunities available to students on and off campus. Organizations including the Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee, Habitat for Humanity and Project Horizon congregated allowing interested students to find out more about these service opportunities. 

MLK has inspired many to live a life of service and by dedicating MLK Day to a day of service we can honor his legacy. CKWL’s event raised awareness about the opportunities offered throughout the year.

What have you done to raise awareness about volunteer opportunities on campus? In what other ways have you worked with partner organizations?

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Campus Kitchen volunteers are often harder to come by during the summer months, but CKWLU has found a way to expand meal service and programming to feed local youth through summer camps.

Children from the local YMCA work in the Campus Kitchen garden

CKWLU partners with the Lexington City Office on Youth’s Summer Fun program to serve snacks five days a week and provide nutrition education on Thursday afternoons. They teach lessons on everything from good vs. bad sugars to how to maximize calories as fuel.

The Campus Kitchen also plays host to the local YMCA summer camp, inviting youth into their garden to learn about where food really comes from through nutrition education programming.

The extra feeding doesn’t stop there; in partnership with the Concerned Citizens group, where the Campus Kitchen serves bi-monthly community dinners year-round, CKWL served two lunches to the Glasgow Summer Enrichment Program.

Campus Kitchen leaders and volunteers execute all of these tasks in addition to regular pickups from places like Walmart, where they sometimes get up to 400 pounds of eggs, cooking shifts, and meal deliveries that they carry out throughout the year.

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The Walmart Foundation released a statement that the parent company had contributed more than $467 million in cash and in-kind gifts in the United States by January – increasing funding by $89 million from the previous year.

The Foundation also re-focused its philanthropy, doubling donations to food banks and giving more than 127 million pounds of food from Walmart stores, distribution centers, and Sam’s Clubs, an increase of 81 million pounds over last year.

Part of both the cash and in-kind gifts came to The Campus Kitchens Project network last year, enabling both the opening of and continued feeding at Campus Kitchens.

The Campus Kitchen coordinator at Washington and Lee University picked up 5000 pounds of food from the Lexington, Va. Walmart last November. Also in 2009, students from the Campus Kitchen at the University of Nebraska, Kearney worked through their local food bank to gather bakery donations from the town’s Walmart.

More recently, the Walmart Foundation turned its local influence on The Campus Kitchens Project into a national commitment, pledging $300,000 for the creation of six new campus kitchens over the next two years.

“One of our areas of focus is hunger relief,” said Maeve Miccio, Project Manager of the Walmart Foundation. “In light of the economy we have really shifted our focus to meeting basic needs.”

Miccio said that the combination of hunger relief, service, and sustainability makes The Campus Kitchen Project a good fit for the Walmart Foundation. She also said the Foundation appreciated grassroots nature of each individual kitchen as it is tailored to fit the needs of the community.

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The Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee University, in addition to just serving its 50,000th meal, also discovered an amazing grant opportunity to bolster your Campus Kitchen’s going green campaign.

The One by One campaign, run by 4imprint, grants $500 worth of promotional products each business day to help causes spread the word, thank donors, recruit volunteers, and add to programs.

Anyone who is part of a 501c(3) charity is eligible apply.  Just fill out the simple form here. Jenny Sproul, coordinator for the Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee received the $500 in-kind grant, and says that while it’s not going to cover all the containers, it’s a good start.

Read more about the kind of containers Jenny is buying at The Kitchen Table (email jtouton@campuskitchens.org for an invite.)

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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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These pictures come from a youth program, a high school, a service center, a campus kitchen, and more. Many just laid down their first layer of paint, packed their first meals, and baked their first batch of cookies. Stay tuned for more!

Wondering where these projects took place?

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Campus Kitchens across the nation were stuffed with activity this Thanksgiving for the annual Turkeypalooza project, a hunger relief initiative mobilizing kitchens to feed thousands on Turkey Day.

The Campus Kitchen at St. Louis University tacked on seven extra cooking shifts to roast 20 whole turkeys, which, when coupled with 20 precooked turkey breasts, served almost 600 meals to needy populations in the St. Louis area.

Eastward, the Campus Kitchen at Washington and Lee University tapped into its partnership with the local Wal Mart – which regularly gives the kitchen discontinued items or dented cans – to feed nine agencies 230 meals.

The Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest University took the advice Gonzaga’s Campus Kitchen, 2500 miles away, and served pumpkin cookies in lieu pumpkin pie to make packaging and transport smoother.

Over 150 volunteers gathered at the Minnesota State University, Mankato Campus Kitchen to help pick up and drop off 200 turkey dinners.

At the Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg College, volunteers may have found it helpful to know the word “pavo”, Spanish for turkey. That’s because the kitchen hosted a Thanksgiving themed bilingual dinner, the result of cooking ten turkeys for three client agencies.

Organizers at Gettysburg recruited volunteers from upper level Spanish classes, study abroad programs, and the Latin American Student Association to practice their language skills (with the Hispanic families the kitchen serves) while munching on green beans, applesauce, and Mexican pasta with ground beef and beans.

“People shared what they were thankful for, then we all enjoyed a delicious meal made up of both typical Thanksgiving food and Hispanic foods,” says Megan Crowe, Campus Kitchen coordinator.

At all of the 20 Campus Kitchens, as the last mound of mashed potatoes disappeared and the last bone was picked, volunteers and coordinators were already gearing up to cook and serve again – using leftover frozen turkeys and holiday-themed menus – before winter break.

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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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A mere two days before the class of 2013 began to arrive at W&L, I went with Jenny to make CKP’s first food pickup from Walmart.   After some initial confusion about which of the many back doors we were supposed to go to, we made our way to the egg bunker where we met the women who would be facilitating the food pick-ups.  As they took us to the back of the store, I was stunned by the sheer volume of food.  The women gave us a brief tour and then we started loading up the cars.  My first impression of these two women was how excited they were that this food was not going to be wasted.  Despite the fact that they had to do some extra work to give us the food, they were more than happy to do so and just as excited as we were to be rescuing this food that otherwise would have been wasted.  Walmart has high standards on what can be sold, so there is an abundance of perfectly good food that they cannot sell because of damaged packaging.  The number of eggs that they were throwing out was unbelievable.  After saving the eggs for only two days, they were able to send us away with over 500 eggs.  From now on, CKP will be picking up from Walmart three times a week, which will supply more than enough food to fill the fridges and many hungry mouths, if my experience is any indication of a normal Walmart run.                            - Austin Branstetter

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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?

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