Temple’s first student food pantry, called the Cherry Pantry, will open next week, and the Temple community can begin donating non-perishable foods to the pantry starting this Tuesday.
This pantry, where students can get free, non-perishable food items, comes after higher education professor Sara Goldrick-Rab researched Temple’s student population and found that one-third of students experience food insecurity.
A food pantry could not have come to fruition without widespread university support — from the administration, faculty members and students.
The Temple News commends the university for coming together to help students who experience food insecurity. We are proud of Temple’s administration for making the decision to become one of more than 560 university food pantries in the United States. We’re proud of Goldrick-Rab, who conducted the research that helped bring the pantry to Main Campus.
And we’re proud of our fellow students, who also took meaningful steps toward helping students who often go hungry. Challah for Hunger, a student organization that fights food insecurity, bakes and sells the traditional Jewish bread every Thursday to fundraise for the food pantry. Since it was founded, the student organization raised nearly $6,000 for the cause.
It is inspiring to see the Temple community supporting each other in the face of food insecurity. We encourage students who have the means to follow suit and donate goods to Challah for Hunger’s OwlCrowd fundraising campaign or to the food pantry directly.
This food pantry is only a small step toward helping students find relief from hunger. We recognize there is no quick fix to food insecurity among college students, but we are proud of the effort that has been made so far.
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