The Challah for Hunger chapter at the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation will participate in the Campus Hunger Project, a national advocacy and research project announced July 29 at Challah for Hunger’s annual leadership summit at West Chester University. In its first year, the Campus Hunger Project will train 80 student volunteers from 40 U.S. colleges to research the growing problem of food insecurity on campus and to investigate how administrations are addressing the problem.
“The UA Hillel Challah for Hunger is participating in this new national initiative to explore student hunger because it is a very complex issue that isn’t widely known or really cared about,” Marisa Hoffman, co-chair of UA Hillel’s Challah for Hunger group, told the AJP via email. “Not only is there food insecurity on the UA campus (there is a student-run food pantry on campus helping to address this issue), but students are suffering from hunger on campuses all over the country. We plan on sharing this information at the UA and helping to create projects to help defeat this problem.”
The Campus Hunger Project is a collaboration of Challah for Hunger and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.
“The issue of hunger on college campuses is one that is hidden in plain sight – and since college is so expensive, people tend to assume that students can afford healthy meals,” says Carly Zimmerman, CEO of Challah for Hunger, which has worked with college students on hunger advocacy and education for 12 years. “The cliché of the college student who survives by eating ramen is becoming more and more of a reality.”
More than 56,000 college students nationwide identify as homeless on their financial aid applications and one out of every seven students visited a food bank last year
