Campus Kitchen

Overview

A Campus Kitchen is an on-campus student service program that is a member of the nonprofit organization Campus Kitchens Project At a Campus Kitchen, students use on-cammpus kitchen space and donated food from their cafeterias to prepare and deliver nourishing meals to their communities.

The organization is headquartered in Washington, DC, with Campus Kitchens located in Saint Louis, MO; Greater Chicago, IL; Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis, MN; New Orleans, LA; Spokane, WA; Mankato, MN, Washington, DC, Lexington, VA, Winston-Salem, NC, and Kearney, NE.

Operations

• Each Campus Kitchen is hosted by a school who shares space in one dining hall’s kitchen, which we call the “Campus Kitchen.” (Usually, this space is used during less-busy or off-hours for the dining hall, such as evenings and weekends.)

• Students go to dining halls and cafeterias at designated times to pick up unserved, usable food. (The dining services companies who donate are protected from liability concerns under the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.)

• Students prepare meals using that donated food, as well as food from local food banks, restaurants, and farmers’ markets.

• Then, students deliver meals free of charge to individuals and agencies in the school’s neighboring community.

• Student volunteers also provide empowerment-based education to clients, such as nutrition education to children, healthy cooking classes to families, and culinary job training to unemployed adults.

History

The Campus Kitchens Project was developed in 2001 as a national outgrowth of DC Central Kitchen, a successful local community kitchen model in Washington DC. The way it happened was kind of a marriage of two concepts.

In 1989, Robert Egger, founder and CEO of DC Central Kitchen, pioneered the idea of recycling food from around Washington DC and using it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop valuable work skills. DCCK became a national model, and as the idea grew, Robert was looking for a way to engage schools in the effort. He piloted a job training program with the American School Food Service, he regularly engaged high school and college students as volunteers at DCCK, and he spoke at universities all over the country.

In 1999, two Wake Forest University students, Jessica Shortall and Karen Borchert, created a small student organization called Homerun that engaged students in cooking and delivering dinners to folks in the community. What started as a hobby instead became a successful campus organization.

In 2001, the two concepts came together, and with a start-up grant from the Sodexho Foundation, The Campus Kitchens Project piloted its first program at Saint Louis University in Missouri.