Bucks County Community College receiving the Hunger Free Campus Award from then Pennsylvania First Lady Frances Wolf after giving her a tour of one of the food pantries.
By Abby Rolland
This blog post spotlights Bucks County Community College’s Food Assistance program that BCCC began in 2019 and expanded since then. One of harp-weaver LLC’s clients provided funding to help expand the program in 2021.
Five years ago, Bucks County Community College (BCCC) Dean of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences Samantha Gross and then-Executive Director of the BCCC Foundation Christina Kahmar had been noticing a number of news articles from other colleges about food pantries on their campuses. Food insecurity on college campuses, particularly community college campuses, is at an alarming rate. According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, around 23% of college students experienced food insecurity in 2020. Research clearly demonstrates the adverse effects of hunger on student learning.
Gross wanted to know more, so she worked with BCCC’s research department to field a survey about food insecurity at the college. The results were “shocking but not surprising.” One third of students experienced food insecurity at some point during the semester including 10% who were chronically food insecure. BCCC has a mission to create “a culture of care;” as Gross puts it, it’s vital to see students as whole people and find ways to address academic and non-academic barriers.
Gross and Kahmar began to work hand in hand to start the program in 2019. They started by offering grocery gift cards – each student seeking a $50 gift card could fill out a simple form twice a semester and receive the gift card with no questions asked. If a student asked for the card more frequently, staff would reach out to discuss any issues the student faced. A part-time position for a faculty member was created to assist students with more chronic problems while a counselor would connect them to other resources if needed.
When they realized that more could be done to address food insecurity, Gross collaborated with the college’s food vendor to stock fruit stands located in areas with a high concentration of students. Before they could move forward with other ideas, the COVID pandemic struck. Things became much more serious for students, particularly those with families.
So, BCCC partnered with a local Catholic charity and a private foundation to help students. Students with children at home could pick up a week’s worth of food, donated by the charity, at the college. The need was clearly visible and urgent, and BCCC knew that partnering with others could help their students.
As COVID-19 became a regular presence in people’s lives and students returned to campus, BCCC recognized that its Food Assistance program had to continually evolve to meet current needs. Gross and her team set up food pantries on each campus that students could regularly access. On one campus, the students managed its pantry as part of their curriculum. Other pantries recruited students enrolled in a Bucks County Intermediate Unit program.
With all of this work toward addressing food insecurity, BCCC attracted the notice of the state of Pennsylvania. In 2022, Frances Wolf, the first lady of Pennsylvania at the time, came to the campus to see the school’s progress and tour the pantries, Later, BCCC was given the Hunger Free Campus Award at a ceremony at Millersville University. Out of nearly 300 colleges, universities, and technical schools in Pennsylvania, 7-9 schools received the award and BCCC was the only community college in the state to earn the designation the first year it was awarded. They’ve continued to receive it every year since.
And BCCC has not stopped at providing food assistance. They’ve now expanded the program to general emergency assistance, creating a fund that students can apply to once a year for payment of up to $500 for a bill that would impede their ability to attend classes. If approved, BCCC then pays the bill directly. BCCC has also begun putting free feminine hygiene products in bathrooms and restocking them regularly. “Someone may not need a product each time, but there’s security in knowing that it’s there,” Gross explained.
BCCC has made a point to ensure that every student is aware of all of these programs. Information about them is included at orientation, in every syllabus, and in online posts.
In surveys about the program, hundreds of students have shared that accessing and using the assistance programs has been a positive experience.
BCCC offers satellite pantries that offer snacks and other items that students need. These pantries, stationed around each campus in areas that large numbers of students frequent, will provide universal access. Anyone - whether they are experiencing food insecurity or forgot a snack at home – can grab a snack. By being structured this way, the satellite pantries help lower the stigma around who needs food.
And where does harp-weaver come in? An individual, whom harp-weaver advises her on her giving (read her blog post spotlight), gave to the BCCC Foundation to help set up the pantries in 2021. As the BCCC Foundation has been vital to supporting the assistance programs, the grant provided critical support to help grow the program in order to serve more students.
Overall, BCCC remains committed to its Food Assistance program as well as its offshoots. “We’re very committed to it and to the culture of caring that we’ve worked to strengthen.”
“We will continue to invest in it and in our students so that they have every opportunity to succeed.”
To learn more about food insecurity on college campuses, check out these articles from HealthAffairs, National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, Feeding America, and PBS.
コメント