What's Happening at UNB
ALUMNI NEWS MAGAZINE | Summer 2024
Food insecurity is about more than just not having enough calories to get through the day.
"It's one of those things where you wouldn't look at someone and say, 'that person is food insecure,'" says Lucy Armstrong, bachelor of philosophy and interdisciplinary studies student, cofounder of the UNB Fredericton campus food bank, and UNB student union food coordinator. "Food insecurity is the lack of access, or funds, or anything that prevents you from being able to provide food for yourself."
Through the pursuit of her degree at UNB's Renaissance College, Lucy discovered that she had a passion for food security both on and off campus. That led her into a partnership with the UNB student union to co-found the Fredericton campus' first food bank, last fall.
"Whether it's providing food in general or finding food that has the correct nutritional value to keep up with your needs, being able to find the right cultural foods, or having the equipment to cook food - food insecurity is a big issue that people face." — Lucy Armstrong
"They might not have the cooking skills, or they might not have a pan to cook their meals, and that creates a lot of barriers for people."
She adds that when students are at school, they often put all their financial resources towards books, tuition, and rent, making food a second — or even third-tier priority.
With the introduction of an easy-to-access, on-campus food bank, student clients can lay down one of the burdens they carry in their journey to complete their education.
"Some of the impacts of the food bank I've seen are students not having to worry about where they're getting food from or stress about how they'll be able to afford it. It's giving students more time to be able to focus on their studies as well as be fully nourished and have the energy to be able to focus on their studies."
Working with the student union, the food bank has implemented several policies to maintain the privacy of clients, and to help alleviate any shame people may feel about using this service. Clients are assigned an identification number and a time to visit the bank to protect their anonymity.
The only goal of the program is to get food to the people who need it, so they can focus on their reason for being at university - to get an education.
"I just want to help people get up on their feet and be able to succeed:' Former UNB student union president and food bank co-founder Amanda Smith (BA'23) says, "Cost of living, tuition, students facing inflation, textbook costs, housing costs; it's a whole affordability thing right now, and it's us trying to navigate that."
Amanda says that it's taken a while to get the project going because the student union wanted to make sure the proper policies were in place before starting, with procedures covering food safety and food bank customer confidentiality.
"We wanted to make sure we had a system for sign-up so that students can register. What we do is give them an identifier number so that the volunteers don't know who they are by name because we want to respect students' privacy."
The food bank project has been in the works since last summer, as the student union saw interest for their previous program - food boxes from Fredericton-based food security initiative Greener Villages - outstrip their capacity.
With an ever-increasing demand for the food box service and limited hours when the boxes could be picked up, Greener Village agreed that a different approach was needed. Pick-up time limitations meant that hampers containing perishable items needed to be returned to Greener Village for refrigeration. That led to a reimagining of how the food security initiatives could work and the food bank program was born.
Amanda turned to student services and on-campus food provider, Chartwells, for help getting the initiative off the ground. Both stepped up to help provide needed shelving and a first round of products to fill those shelves. According to Alex Boyd, CEO of Greener Village, Fredericton, N.B., which will use its bulk purchasing power as a region-wide food provider to buy food for the bank moving forward, the student food bank is one of the most important initiatives the organization is undertaking.
"Poverty is a trap," he says. "It sucks people in, holds on to them and doesn't let them escape." "We know that one of the most effective ways to break that trap is through education. It's one of the cycle breakers and it's massively important."
When people have immediate, high-priority needs like access to food or shelter, they can't address longer-term needs like skill development and education. "How much energy can you invest in education when you think, 'I've got nothing to eat'?" asks Alex. "If you can help people to complete their education to gain the employment that they need, they become more in control of their food and financial resources."
Breaking the cycle of poverty in early adulthood is why Greener Village's partnership with the UNB student union is so important. "It's a way for us to improve food security among students," says Alex. "And to have someone else dedicated on the ground, helping us to accomplish that is pretty special."
The Students' Representative Council (SRC) on the Saint John campus also started a food bank. The campus food pantry opened in November. Using QR code technology, the bank gives clients a time slot to pick up their items, with a maximum of one visit per week. This is in addition to the Tuesday morning breakfast program the SRC runs at Hazen Hall, which also started in late November. Both programs are stocked with fresh, healthy food, and are supported by a mix of government grants, SRC funding and alumni donations.
"Forty per cent of post-secondary students in Canada are food insecure, with direct effects on both physical and mental health. With rising costs of living across this country, food insecurity is at epidemic proportions never before seen." — Madison Worth (BSc'24), former SRC president and science student.
Madison adds that when students neglect their nutrition because of cost, "It's not an ideal environment for learning, it's not an ideal environment for mental health." "There is a mix of students accessing the food pantry and breakfast programs, including international students, mature students and the biggest demographic - domestic students. "It's kind of been taken to a whole other level now," Madison says of rising expenses for students, noting that homeless shelters and food banks off campus are now seeing students using their services.
The SRC is taking a holistic approach to address not just food costs, but other necessities in the years ahead. "We're targeting the housing problem and setting up a new bursary for that, as well as some other transportation initiatives."
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