Nourishing People in Need

Campus Dining’s Community Food Security Initiative

The COVID-19 pandemic and California's stay-at-home order in March of 2020 resulted in UCSB’s resident student population moving out of campus housing. By the end of Winter Quarter 2020, an essential shutdown of dining commons food production occurred. With concerns of layoffs and low staff morale a growing threat, Campus Dining leadership offered some outside-of-the-box thinking to provide dining employees with meaningful work, while at the same time addressing a growing need for food security in our local community.

Campus Dining leadership connected with the UCSB Office of Development to secure a number of anonymous donors with a passion for helping to solve the hunger problem in our community. Donors agreed to fund the purchase of raw food ingredients, while Campus Dining would provide the labor for food preparation and delivery. Campus Dining partnered with the Community Environmental Council’s Santa Barbara County Food Rescue Network to identify local agencies who serve food insecure community members and have experienced a significant increase in need of prepared meals for charitable distribution.

In a span of two weeks, at the start of Fall Quarter 2020, the Community Meal Program was put in motion and it has been growing in size and scope. Campus Dining now prepares and delivers food to fourteen different charitable organizations in the Santa Barbara County area, averaging approximately 8,300 meals each week. Agencies that receive prepared and packaged lunch and dinner meals include The Salvation Army, City Net, Dorothy Jackson Family Resource Center, Casa de la Raza, United Way, Family Services Agency of Santa Barbara, and more. See below for photos of “Thank You” signs the Isla Vista Youth Project made for our talented and caring dining team members. The signs are from some of our youngest food recipients and only one of the vulnerable populations we’re feeding, which also includes unsheltered individuals, isolated seniors, and low-income and immigrant families. The program is expected to continue through the end of Spring Quarter 2021, with a projected total of 242,000 meals prepared and delivered by mid-June 2021.

You can learn more about this worthwhile program via the UCSB Giving page. Thank you to the Campus Dining Team for your hard work and dedication, and for making a difference in our community!