Kean food pantry continues to make a difference

With Thanksgiving just days away, Dr. Norma Bowe is thinking about the Kean University students who won’t be getting the traditional roasted turkey with all the trimmings.

Dr. Bowe, with the help of Dr. Anthony Pittman, are the founders of a Kean food pantry that volunteers are busy stocking for the holidays. More than a third of America’s college students are food insecure, according to a survey by researchers at Temple University and Wisconsin HOPE Lab.

Dr. Bowe, a professor in health education, experienced this personally with one of her own students who was silently struggling. The student was homeless and was sleeping in his car at the time. He had no food and was struggling to find a place to live.

“It made me step back because we do all this homelessness relief for people at the train station in Newark,” said Dr. Bowe. “…and yet we have homeless and hungry students right on this campus.”

From then on, Dr. Bowe was inspired to start a food pantry, stemming from this one student who had the courage to ask for help. The food pantry came to be with the help of Dr. Pittman, the dean of the college of education, who found a permanent location in Hennings Hall.

The way the food pantry works is that professors, EOF workers, or other campus department officials will notice if it looks like a student is struggling or is in need of help and resources. From there, they email Dr. Bowe about the student and then the student is sent to her to get whatever sources they need from the food pantry.

“We give them a grocery bag and tell them to go at it and take what they need,” said Bowe. “It all started two years ago with a student that was homeless here. He’s doing great now.”

That was two years ago. Today, many other students also use this resource.

“Now we have a bunch of students that regularly come and get food out of the pantry,” Bowe said. “A lot of people on campus know about the pantry and will send students over.”

The food runs low at times. But they never run out because they are constantly restocking the inventory with the help of students and community volunteers.The volunteers also use their resources to help out other people throughout different cities and communities in the area.

Linda Salcfas, the executive chair of the volunteer community called “Be the Change NJ,” who with many other volunteers, helps keep this pantry going, supports the homeless and hungry citizens within the community.

Kean University Food Pantry. Photo Courtesy of Salimah McCullough.

“We do a Thanksgiving drive which goes towards a thanksgiving dinner at Newark Penn Station,” Salcfas said. “We set up a ‘chopshop’ on the ground and they ‘shop’. They get to take what they need.”

Be the Change NJ is a non profit group at Kean, founded by Dr. Bowe, that is dedicated to community service and activism projects that helps promote peace and non violence in urban neighborhoods. Made up of volunteers, this group is very passionate to serve the needs of the local communities around them.

“Our Be the Change group has nearly 1,500 volunteers now,” Bowe said. “One third are current undergraduate students, one third alumni, and one third community partners. We are very embedded in the local communities around here.”

Like the Thanksgiving drive, the Be the Change NJ group also finds other ways to donate food to the community like operation Pb&J. For operation Pb&J, volunteers bring in supplies and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that get sent off to Newark Penn Station and other parts of the community including single mothers in Elizabeth who have run out of food.

Besides donating food, Salcfas and the Be the Change NJ volunteers also donate clothes, school supplies, toiletries, toys, etc.

“If you’re not living on campus and you don’t have a meal plan, a lot of our students don’t have enough food,” Bowe said. “They are paying for tuition. They are working. They are commuting and paying for gas. They are hungry.”

Hunger and homelessness isn’t noticeable to people that aren’t affected by it. It might take sometime before someone can notice a person who is inwardly struggling.

“Hunger is a real problem for a lot of people in New Jersey and I think college students are a group where its underestimated how many people are hungry,” Bowe said. “My hope is that no one on campus would go hungry and if they needed food supplies, they would come.”

Students can easily help out the community by sending donations to Dr. Bowe’s office located in Hennings 411 or to the food pantry itself in Hennings 413. You can also email her at nbowe@kean.edu if interested in making a donation or becoming an intern which she is looking for.