Bre’aujanae Moore, a Toro Guardian Scholars student assistant, helping assemble the bags for the care package program. Photo courtesy of Morgan Kirk.
By Robert Rios, Co-News Editor
Helping to meet the nutritional needs of students struggling with food and housing insecurity has been tough enough for The Toro Food Pantry and Basic Needs program which has been supporting students on and off-campus during the school year with their nutritional needs and the recent pandemic has not stopped the pantry from being a main resource for students in need.
Once the COVID-19 safer at home guidelines went into effect, it became difficult for many students to find even the simplest essential home items and groceries. Recently, shopping has become a lot harder due to long lines at the grocery stores and essential items selling out faster than usual.
In light of this, the pantry on campus is available to help students find basic needs assistance. For a short while care packages were made for Toro’s to pick up on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students were instructed to bring their school ID for identification. Attendees were first told to meet by the meditation room in the LSU, but as the campus slowly closed itself off to more people, the pantry set up a pick-up stop in parking lot one.
“I think right now since we’ve lost the food pantry students are feeling more stressed-out than ever trying to figure out how they can get food or how they are going to eat the next day,” Basic Needs Coordinator Morgan Kirk, said. “That’s why we were able to implement the care package program for our students.”
The care packages would then be given to whoever arrived at the location to receive the assortment of non-perishable foods. A total of 90 care packages were given to students while supplies lasted. Unfortunately, for the time being, the pantry is still waiting to secure more food to give to students as many of the businesses they order their food from are put on have supplies on backorder or have just run out of food. One of the non-profit organizations the pantry works with is Food Finders.
Kirk also mentioned that in those care packages, they kept note of some places within Los Angeles County so in the event that students ran out of food they would have another option available for them as a source.
The campus food pantry is a useable source as according to Kirk’s most recent statistics on the use of the pantry, from June 2018 to 2019 they saw a total of 2 thousand users and 3 thousand visitors to the service.
Food availability is very important for students at Dominguez Hills, as this past Student Research Day Hawk McFadzen announced in their study that 61.3 percent of students were food insecure and 15.1 percent were housing insecure.
“I don’t work day to day with students and I’m not daily interacting with them, but it’s gotta be so hard for a lot of these students,” Hawk McFadzen said. “Like international students that don’t get [have] anywhere to go and out of state students, when the safer at home order came in, I was just immediately struck by how many students there are at this university who aren’t safe at home who have any number of issues why their home is not the safest place to be. On that front, it’s just hard to think about our students, but then also the ones who are only able to make it because of what the food pantry has to offer, how limited that is being right now. Food security is such a complex issue.”
McFadzen hopes that when students are allowed to return to school, the university and its entities check on student food and housing needs, and also analyze their financial and mental state after the pandemic has passed.
Even with a tall task facing them, Kirk and her assistants are happy to be helping.
“I’m the only full-time staff and then I have student assistants,” Kirk said. “My student assistants are feeling overwhelmed with joy and willing to help out their peers.”
If students are still looking for food or housing assistance, please contact Morgan Kirk at her email for any questions, [email protected]
Student housing also has a pantry that is open only to current students still living there. Food is passed out to them every day at 5 p.m and should last for a while as they too have many non-perishable items in stock.
