Campus Kitchen rolls into Athens neighborhood
UGA will feed extra native residents this fall with its new trailer
The College of Georgia’s Campus Kitchen trailer rolled into north Athens final month, bringing meals, details about accessible sources and a little bit of festivity to the Fowler Drive neighborhood simply as Athens-Clarke County college students returned to high school.
The primary occasion, a neighborhood sources truthful, promoted wholesome consuming and dwelling. Native organizations have been readily available to speak to residents about WIC, SNAP and the Athens Space Diaper Financial institution, applications designed to profit low-income households. UGA Campus Kitchen pupil volunteers and employees additionally served everybody a wholesome spaghetti dinner.
The Campus Kitchen trailer on the Fowler Drive Elementary Open Home. Scholar volunteers and CK Director Andie Bisceglia serve wholesome milkshakes and to-go dinners. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
On the subsequent cease, a back-to-school occasion at Fowler Drive Elementary, Campus Kitchen supplied smoothies and despatched everybody house with a meal ready earlier that day.
For some within the neighborhood, it was the primary time they’d heard of Campus Kitchen, a program out of the Workplace of Service-Studying, which reviews to the UGA vice presidents for instruction and for public service and outreach.
“It’s nice that there’s a service like this that helps households,” mentioned Dollie Miller, mother to a fourth grade pupil at Fowler Drive Elementary College. “There are such a lot of households, grandparents on the market that want the assistance. It’s nice that y’all will probably be popping out extra.”
The Campus Kitchen trailer shares meals and recipes on the Wholesome Consuming occasion at Central Baptist Church organized by Household Connection-Communities in Faculties. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
The trailer permits pupil volunteers to have extra face-to-face contact with the folks they serve, mentioned Sarah Rucker, a grasp’s pupil in panorama structure from Fairburn, Georgia.
“This manner I believe that there will probably be extra of an opportunity to speak with folks and listen to what they want us for and the place,” mentioned Rucker, who will oversee neighborhood outreach utilizing the meals trailer this yr.
The Fowler Drive occasions happened throughout a brainstorm session with Patrick Howard, a board member of Household Connection-Communities in Faculties of Athens.
The Campus Kitchen trailer shares meals and recipes on the Wholesome Consuming occasion at Central Baptist Church organized by Household Connection-Communities in Faculties. (Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
“How will you mix making an attempt to show folks to consuming higher, how they’ll eat higher and other ways of consuming higher? Howard mentioned the group mentioned. “That’s the place the meals trailer comes into play. It provides us a chance to do all of that by means of partnerships the place we are able to expose folks to a meal they’ll style, methods to put together it after which join them to sources.”
Campus Kitchen has primarily served meals insecure households within the Athens space, a lot of them a part of the Athens Neighborhood Council on Getting old’s Grandparents Feeding Grandchildren program.
Scholar staff and volunteers sometimes put together sizzling meals and pack baggage of contemporary produce and wholesome groceries to ship to households weekly. The trailer will complement that service.
(Picture by Shannah Montgomery)
“The trailer brings this meals truck, festive environment,” mentioned Campus Kitchen Coordinator Andie Bisceglia. “It makes an inviting area for folks to return to neighborhood occasions, get sources and be capable of feed their household.”
Bisceglia and Rucker produce other new concepts involving the trailer, reminiscent of cooking meals on website for folks on the Benefit Homeless Day Heart on North Avenue and utilizing it for on-site meal preparation at UGArden.
“Campus Kitchen is basically making an attempt to present again and pour again into the neighborhood that the college is part of,” Howard mentioned. “They’re not simply current locally, however they’re an lively a part of it.”
