EWU opens Tawanka Hall food pantry location

CHENEY – Eastern Washington University's three-year old project to alleviate food issues among its students took a big step forward last Thursday, Dec. 5, with the opening of its larger walk-in food pantry at Tawanka Commons.

"The special thing about this location is it has refrigeration," EWU community food security coordinator Libby Vigil said while watching several students look through a nearby refrigerator stocked with fresh dairy products.

The main room at Tawanka 129E, next to the Vending Café, is the eighth location on campus for Eastern's food pantry project. The project began with a survey in 2016 in which the Office of Community Engagement Director Dr. Brian Davenport said it was discovered that one third of the responding students dealt with food insecurity at some point during the year.

"We said, 'OK, this is a problem, we should fix it,'" Davenport said of the university's response.

Eastern hooked up with Americorp's VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) program and applied for funding through the Washington Campus Compact, which provided volunteers in a three-year agreement to help get the food program started. Vigil said the first year revolved around finding partners to help with supplying food and other materials - and Spokane's 2nd Harvest and the Washington Dairy Farmers Association stepped up to provide that assistance.

The second year involved finding a location for the pantry, a task made more difficult because the prime, central location for the space - the Pence Union Building - was being renovated. But instead of seeing this as a setback, Davenport said they took it as an opportunity.

"Rather than waiting until the PUB was finished, we said, 'let's figure out a different option," he added.

The different option was to build individual food cabinets at locations around campus. Eventually, seven of these were built at Showalter, Sutton and Isla halls, JFK Library, the University Recreation Center, the Physical Education Building and eventually the PUB when it opened. Vigil said those cabinets were all in constant service by April 2018.

The food cabinets actually proved to be an innovative approach in that they are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With a central location, Davenport said, students in need might not be able to access food due to not being able to stop by during office hours.

The cabinets are always accessible, and via agreements with campus organizations under what Vigil called the "Adopt A Pantry Program," are re-stocked weekly with foods such as bread rotated to maintain freshness. All the Office of Community Engagement asks of students using the cabinets is to fill out a short survey asking for demographic information such as class standing, gender and whether or not they are a veteran and have kids.

"It's not a barrier (for use) and people use pins to identify themselves," Vigil said. "We're just here to feed people."

The downside of the cabinets was the university wasn't able to offer fresh products such as dairy and vegetables. That required refrigeration, Davenport said, and through a cooperative effort with University Dining Services, which came on board as a partner this year, a central location in Tawanka was opened last week.

Vigil, a Spokane-native who graduated from Western Oregon University with a degree in sociology, said Dining Services provided a pair of refrigerators and a freezer and shelving for the Tawanka location. CHAS has provided reusable bags for carrying groceries, along with $10,000 in funding - $5,000 of which goes towards food, female hygiene products and office or cleaning supplies and $5,000 specifically for female hygiene products in the cabinets.

Both Vigil and Davenport said the cabinets and food program as a whole have received a lot of support from the campus community. The President's Office held a food drive in fall, and Eastern fraternities and sororities have volunteered hours to stock the cabinets each week.

"We get calls from campus departments and organizations saying 'we're doing this for your pantry,'" Davenport said, noting the effort is truly grassroots. "We're not the only reason why it's successful."

Vigil added that the need to address students' food insecurity exists and isn't going away soon.

"We have a lot of repeat users," she added.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.