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How UC Davis students can get free food during the school year

Some UC Davis students don't know if they'll have enough money for food at the end of the week. The new Aggie Compass is the UC Davis response to that issue.

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Students struggling with how and where to get a meal are getting a helping hand from UC Davis this year.

There’s more to college than the cost of tuition. As students attempt to deal with a new school year, many students do not know if they will have money for food at the end of the month or even the end of the week. The University of California has made efforts to provide data to assess the issue of food insecurity on their campuses.

The 2016 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey revealed that 44 percent of undergraduates and 26 percent of graduate students on campus had experienced some form of food insecurity. As defined by the United States Department of Agriculture, there two different types of food insecurity.

There is low food security, which refers reduced quality, variety of diet, with little or no indication of reduced food intake, and very low food security, which is reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns due to limited resources.

“In the very low food security range we’re talking about, they don’t have access to any food. Let alone nutritious food, so we don’t want to just stuff people full of ramen. It’s just not healthy," said Leslie Kemp, Director of the Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center.

"If a student goes to every class hungry or every class stressed because they don’t know where they’re next meal was going to come from, that doesn’t make for students that can be academically successful."

UC Davis is making strides in addressing the issue. So far, the campus has implemented an Aggie food connections website, the GetCalFresh mobile tool, brought EBT capability to UC Davis stores and Memorial Union Markets, and created edible gardens and seasonal fruiting tree maps for the campus.

One of the most recent efforts is the Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center, the UC Davis response to food security on their campus.

Aggie Compass as the hub for resources

“We’re functioning as a hub on campus for all the existing resources that are in the community and on campus,” said Kemp. “We found through studies and focus groups that we have a lot of resources in this area, but students don’t know about them…”

One of those programs, now under Aggie Compass, is the Fruit and Veggie Up program, a program run by students out of the Aggie Compass center connecting students to free fruits and vegetables.

This produce gets collected from grocery stores like the Nugget Market in Davis and the Davis Co-Op and from the UC Davis student farm and Tandem Organic Farm.

“Twice a week, we drive the van around and collect all of that produce and then bring it to the center and hand it out to students for free,” Kemp said.

As those students pick up the food, they're also given recipes for how to prepare the fruits and vegetables that are being given away that day. The center can also bring the food to the students with the Fruit and Veggie pop-up; it's a bike storing a boxful of fresh produce that they give away to students.

The beginning stages of a food recovery app

UC Davis is also in the beginning stages of a food recovery app.

Generally, the app would alert students to leftover food from an on-campus event; students could then arrive with their own containers or plates to get some of the leftover food that would otherwise be composted.

The program was piloted three times over the summer, and it resulted in a giveaway of about 150 lunch boxes every day for four days to students on campus.

“That’s just because it was left over from an event and would have been composted, but, because we had some of those regulations in place and had worked with our health safety department, we were able to give those away to students,” Kemp said.

According to Kemp, they're already working with a vendor to develop it. When it's available, the app will allow event planners to sent out push notifications notifying students about the leftover food.

Immediate access to food for students in crisis

“We have students that are coming in and saying I have to choose between paying the light bill and paying my tuition,” said Kemp. “I have a graduate student right now who is financially insecure for two months because their graduate student stipend will not be in for two months…”

Some students may experience crisis situations that go beyond just asking for help with basic needs like food and housing. According to Kemp, these are students that can sometimes have no food for the weekend and no prospect for getting any food.

“I’m so happy that we’re open now and that we can help these students. Part of what we can do is give them immediate food through our food closet,” Kemp added. Other options include utilizing the student-run pantry on campus and the Fruit and Veggie Up program.

Even students experiencing housing issues can head to the center and eventually connect with caseworkers in the Office of Student Success.

Streamlined Cal Fresh enrollment for students

Some of the standout efforts coming from UC Davis are those being made to enroll students in Cal Fresh.

As far back as 2015, Yolo County had a low percentage of it’s Cal Fresh eligible population enrolled in the program. The missing component was determined to be UC Davis students who were eligible but had not applied.

Ultimately, their effort resulted in a full-time office for a Cal Fresh representative who can help students enroll in the program. Students can actually enter, apply, and perform their Cal Fresh interview on the spot.

“We are the first UC to have that, but it’s really exciting for us because Max [Vaca] is able to make the application enrollment process much more streamlined for our students.”

UC Davis' in-person approval rate for Cal Fresh is currently around 89 percent, according to Kemp. The requirements for Cal Fresh enrollment for UC Davis students can be found at this link.

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