Students are coming together to reduce on-campus food insecurity through Mason Jar Meals.
The Peer Health Educators (PHE), consisting of 45 students, lead health promotion initiatives on campus, focusing on topics like nutrition, fitness, wellness, and harm reduction. They create mason jars filled with nonperishable ingredients for quick and easy meals, such as soups and stews, that students can pick up for free four times a semester. The initiative was first started in 2019 to help students who are experiencing any form of food insecurity.
“The Mason Jar Meals [program] in particular was started because they’re nonperishable. So, a student can get one, they can put it in their pantry and use it when they need it,” one of the organizers of the PHE, Rachel Gawenda, ArtSci ’25, said in an interview with The Journal.
Gawenda said the program has grown in recent years due to rising inflation. Now, spots for the Mason Jar Meals program can fill up in hours.
“For students, their level of food security, whether it’s perfect to very severe food insecurity, can be compounded by factors like high tuition and living costs, limited time and money to cook meals, and then challenges of just balancing all the things that students do like schoolwork,” Gawenda said.
Being well-fed is key to succeeding in your studies, Gawenda said. She aims to market the mason jars in a way that doesn’t shame students for taking part in the program—since anyone can participate and benefit at any point along the spectrum, it helps reduce the stigma that’s still associated with food insecurity.
“We market them [Mason Jar Meals] and do them in a way that doesn’t make our students feel othered because anyone can sign up. We don’t have a sign that says you have to be food insecure,” Gawenda said.
Tima Al Shammaa, ArtSci ’25, another one of the organizers said in an interview with The Journal that the funding from student organizations such as the Society of Graduate and Professional Studies (SGPS) has allowed PHE to target the needs of graduate students.
While PHE is typically able to prepare 30 mason jars at a time, the collaboration with SGPS has allowed them to expand their program to create 50 mason jars just for graduate students through SGPS funding.
“The cost of living is making life for graduate students absolutely unaffordable,” SGPS Vice-President (Graduate) Zaid Kasim said in an interview with The Journal. “Our graduate students are starving, like quite literally, starving. They cannot afford food.”
Kasim explained it’s not the role of the SGPS to meet the basic needs of graduate and professional students, but the student organization felt they had to step in and are investing more in funding for food security than ever. When the SGPS provides links to resources for food insecurity in their newsletter, the links get thousands of clicks from interested graduate and professional studies students, Kasim said.
“This is what students are looking for and we’re filling in a gap, but the SGPS can’t do this alone. We need help to do this, and we’re currently working with the principal to provide us with funding,” he added.
Kasim disclosed there will be more initiatives coming from the SGPS in January as they announce work being done in partnership with the AMS Food Bank.
Tags
food insecurity, Mason Jar Program, Peer Health Educators, SGPS
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