Campus Kitchen at Northwestern University

CKNU takes steps to go green

Campus Kitchens at Northwestern uses Styrofoam containers to deliver all its meals. Currently, CKNU uses around 195 Styrofoam meal containers every week. Although Styrofoam is cheap and insulating, it cannot be re-used and is also non-biodegradable.

To become greener, CKNU is now planning on substituting Styrofoam containers with Tupperware. Clients willing to participate in the program will get two Tupperware containers for weekly deliveries. One container will carry the first meal of the week, and volunteers will collect it when making the week’s second delivery. Participating clients will have to be responsible for washing and returning used Tupperware at the next delivery.

Leadership team members and volunteers are still discussing the feasibility of the project because it involves start-up costs for purchasing the Tupperware containers. The success of the project also depends on the willingness of clients to wash and return the containers.

Let us know if you have any ideas on how CKNU can go green!

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Evanston families in more need than we thought

Our Feeding Our Future program is coming to a close as the season winds down and a new school year begins. For the four Northwestern interns, this transition has brought attention to the plight of families who struggle in secrecy instead of in public, such as the panhandlers that we generally see around Evanston.

Earlier this month, the CKNU coordinator received an e-mail from an agency manager explaining that a staff worker had “noticed people picking through the trash looking for half eaten sandwiches.” As a response, CKNU will provide grocery bags for 10 families in-need. The non-perishables we distribute in the bags will include canned goods (soup, vegetables), oatmeal, pasta, rice, and baking mixes.

In recent weeks, we’ve held food drives to help stock our pantry with healthier options for snacks. Instead of asking for cookies and crackers, we asked local residents to donate jell-o, baby carrots, juice, and lunch meat.   If you’d like to contribute please let us know!

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Summer at CKNU

This summer, CKNU will take part in the Feeding Our Future program by providing free, nutritious meals to youths who generally qualify for reduced-cost lunches during the school year. We also deliver meals to senior citizens, low-income families, and individuals with varying disabilities in the Evanston area. There are four Northwestern students leading these Campus Kitchen activities: Abby (class of 2009), Molly (a rising junior), Amy (class of 2009), and myself (Leezia, a rising sophomore). I’d like to tell you a little more about us!

The four of us are very compatible with each other, and we all bring varying strengths to the table in terms of teaming up and executing our responsibilities efficiently. The first few days of our internship we got acquainted with the proper procedures and protocols with regards to delivering the meals, creating grocery bags, shopping and reimbursements, managing volunteers, and maintaining a sanitary workplace.

We have been taking turns managing the meal, delivery, and food rescue shifts.  We have anywhere between 3-7 volunteers per shift, most of whom are either high school football players or professional, working adults with spare time and an affinity for service. During the week, we make an average of 1,600 sandwiches to distribute to centers such as the YMCA, Howard Area Community Center (a social service agency for low-income individuals), Connections for the Homeless and the Salvation Army. It’s difficult to be at the kitchen by 8:15 a.m. a few times per week and fill meal containers with donated goods and whip out a few hundred PB&J sandwiches in a matter of a few hours, but the result is entirely worth it. One of my fellow interns described the situation best when she said, “It’s different when you know who you’re delivering the meals to. When you put a face to the food, you work extra hard in making sure the food is sanitary and actually tasty to eat.” After going on my first delivery shift a few weeks ago, I can most sincerely agree. As I become better acquainted with our clients, it becomes easier to wake up in the morning because I know that someone in Evanston is depending on me to provide them with what is often their only meal for the entire day. At that point, sleeping in becomes less important and helping the community becomes the priority.

We’ve been interning for about three weeks now, but the four of us still have a lot to accomplish. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hosting food drives at grocery stores in the area, and then we’ll each get an opportunity go to the Greater Chicago Food Depository to pick up subsidized snacks for our clients. Until then, we’ll continue to make PB&Js…

Come and join us in the kitchen! Check out our schedule on our “Volunteer With Us” tab. We hope to see you soon!

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Hard Time, But Big Hearts!

With stories of poverty and economic downturns all over the media, it is easy to wonder, who does poverty affect?  According to Feed America, 36.2 million people in the U.S. were food insecure in 2007.  But since then, things have changed.  The Heartland Alliance reported that 1,110,002 people in Cook County visited a food pantry during the fourth quarter of 2008.  This is a 32.6% increase from the fourth quarter of 2007.

But there is a bright side! Kim Kilbride of The South Bend Tribune reports that though people are less able to donate money or food to non-profit organizations these days, they are donating their time.  Those who have been laid-off are spending their time volunteering while job-hunting.

CKNU is no exception to this increase in volunteering!  In April alone CKNU welcomed 39 new volunteers, who, together with our exisiting volunteers, completed 302 volunteer hours. All this hard work produced 3,126 meals! We thank all of our dedicated volunteers at CKNU for your help in providing relief to those in need of support in our area.

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Exciting activities at CKNU!

CKNU has a couple new and exciting things going on these days!

Slow Cooker/Crock Pot Initiative

Planning for our Slow Cooker/Crock Pot Initiative is well under way, and we hope to have a pilot session in the next couple months. Our mission with this initiative is to show clients that meals made in a slow cooker can be economical, nutritional, easy, and a time saver. We will demonstrate, prepare, and cook one meal for clients. It is our aspiration to further our clients’ self-sufficiency through this initiative.

April 26, 2009: Global Youth Service Day (Global Youth Service Week at CKNU)

CKNU will be hosting its first annual High School Conference to celebrate GYSD. The conference will include 30 to 40 high school students from neighboring schools in the Evanston area. These students will participate in a poverty simulation to learn what it’s like to make ends meet. In the end, we hope they will join us in the solution to end poverty and hunger.

That’s it for now. Questions? Comments? Want to volunteer for a shift? E-mail us at cknu@campuskitchens.org!

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CKNU wants to know your favorite song!

If you’ve been to a meal shift, you probably know we have a pretty regular and predictable CD collection we play - Madonna, Beatles,  and our beloved 80s mixes.  Since you’re with us for at least 1hour and 45minutes during those shifts, what music would you like to hear?

Let us know your favorite songs and artists and we’ll compile a CKNU CD mix dedicated to you all, our great volunteers!

Also, keep checking our website for new events, volunteer opportunties and our wish list.  Thanks for your support.

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Start the New Year with CKNU

Happy New Year! The holidays came and went in a blink of an eye and here’s a small glimpse of all our achievement in 2008

Number of meals served: 50,548

Number of new volunteers: 695

Number of volunteer hours: 4,623

Pounds of food rescued from dining halls: 2,340

Pounds of food donated: 4,655

Those are big numbers and we thank you all for contributing to CKNU’s success. As we say goodbye to 2008, we say hello to an even bigger and better 2009.  Come join us this year! Not sure how to be part of the CKNU family? Volunteer with us during meal, delivery, or food rescue shifts. You can also hold food drives on behalf of CKNU with your friends, family, classmates, co-workers, etc. Perhaps you enjoy planning special events - yes, we can use help there too! We welcome ideas from all those interested in making CKNU the best it can be. We hope to hear from you soon!   Don’t forget to check our Volunteer page for new opportunities.

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Gobble Gobble

      Yes, folks!  It’s that time of year when pumpkin pies, plates of turkey and stuffing, heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and gravy start dancing in our dreams.   The Thanksgiving Holiday is upon us and what better way to give thanks for what we have than to volunteer our time to those who may not be as fortunate as ourselves.  Campus Kitchen at Northwestern University is having the annual TurkeyPalooza!  During TurkeyPalooza we provide our clients with a traditional Thanksgiving meal.  This includes turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, candied yams, green bean casserole and pie!  This event will occur from Saturday November 22 - Tuesday November 25.  For more information please email cknu@campuskitchens.org  

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We’re (almost) famous!!

Take an inside look at Northwestern University’s Campus Kitchens program, part of the national Campus Kitchens effort. Students from throughout the University prepare meals using leftover food from dining halls and distribute those meals to those in need throughout Evanston.

Northwestern University regularly produces News@Northwestern, a television news magazine, for the Big Ten Network in conjunction with Hess/Hoffman Productions of Chicago.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5F7Iq07_dic

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