Chartwells launches Food Insecurity Program

Dining services provider Chartwells is launching a new program designed to help students with food insecurities this fall.

The Food Insecurity Program will allow students, faculty and staff members to donate unused meals from their account to the Food Insecurity Program. The meals will then be offered to students who self-identify as food insecure, said Nick Richard-Hoffman, Chartwells director of marketing.

Those who don’t have unused meals to offer can donate money toward the purchase of a meal plan to be added to the Food Insecurity Program.

“We want to make sure there’s ample food for everyone on campus, and everyone gets to eat,” he said.

Chartwells is pre-loading the fund with 100 meals, so food insecure students can begin receiving meals when the new school year begins and the donation program rolls out.

Students using the program will self-identify as food insecure in their meal plan account and then can be notified through the Chartwells smartphone app or by email when meals are available on their account. When meals are added to their account, they can swipe their student ID card at Garvey Commons for any meal — just like any other student, Richard-Hoffman said. 

The initiative is part of Chartwells’ goal of supporting the communities it serves, it is also part of a broader initiative at St. Cloud State University to better serve students in poverty.

The initiative began in spring 2016 when then-Provost Ashish Vaidya asked Special Advisor to the President Judith Siminoe to convene a group to look into what the university could do to assist students in poverty.

The group focused both on homelessness and food insecurity.

That effort turned into Bridge to Benefits, a campus initiative led by Social Work Professor Sheila Moriarty and St. Cloud State student interns to help students assess their needs and connect them with benefits in the community.

In 2018 the group reconvened around the issue of food insecurity. A digital means of sharing access to meals on campus was one priority for the group, Siminoe said.

It’s not a complete solution because it’s more costly than some other options and doesn’t address every need, but it’s a start and will allow students to get a meal while they are on campus — without stigma, she said.

“Many of our students who have food insecurity issues are not one person living all by themselves. They’re members of a family, so if that student is food insecure it probably means that there are children or partners or other people that are living as a unit that don’t have enough access to food,” she said.

As the Food Insecurity Program launches this fall, the committee will continue work toward two additional goals — establishing a food pantry at St. Cloud State for students and working with the non-profit Fare for All and Moriarty’s students to establish a system for bringing food boxes purchased by students from Fare for All to campus for distribution.