Monday, September 19, 2022 Food, personal hygiene items sought for Pantry's food drive

During the next year, 1-in-3 students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln will face food insecurity and hunger.

The Husker Pantry provides two on-campus locations to assist UNL students with food, toiletries and personal hygiene items, school supplies, and cleaning products. The pantry relies on donations to keep it’s shelves stocked and the weekly pick-up bags filled so students do not suffer from hunger. 100% of donations benefit UNL students.

As part of its fall food drive happening September 21–30, 2022, the pantry is asking the community to help donate 3,500 items.

Items of high demand include all hygiene and personal care products; pasta, rice, and noodles; and specialty groceries, like garbanzo beans, quinoa, and brown rice.

More than 6,000 items on average are distributed every month to UNL students and this one event is tremendous in keeping the shelves stocked for Huskers.

According to Kenji Madison, associate director for Big Red Resilience & Well-being and the pantry's supervisor, this is one of only two collection drives the pantry coordinates for itself annually. It helps sustain inventory on the shelves to feed students as the season change towards the colder months.

"Student visits to both locations has increased 45.9% this fall over last year, in part due to economic inflation," adds Madison. "With grocery food prices showing no sign of leveling off or decreasing, we expect the demand for the pantry's services to continue to rise, too."

There are two ways to get donated items to the pantry:

• Purchase online via the pantry’s Amazon Marketplace wishlist. Items are shipped and delivered directly to the pantry location inside the University Health Center.
• Drop off locally-purchased items at one of 20 collection bins located on City and East Campuses. Find a location here.

For additional details about the food drive and its operations, email pantry@unl.edu.

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