NH college students face food insecurity: Here's how Gather helps Great Bay and UNH

For many college students in New Hampshire and around the country, meals in the dining hall are a highlight of their day. They come together with friends, enjoy food, and take a break from classes and studying for the next exam.

But for many other students, this is not a reality.

Great Bay Community College and the University of New Hampshire in Durham are both taking action to address the problem, thanks to a partnership with Gather, a Portsmouth-based nonprofit well known on the Seacoast for providing food to people who need it.

A lack of access to food is a prevalent issue across college campuses nationally. U.S. News and World Report has reported 38% of students at two-year colleges and 29% of students at four-year colleges experienced food insecurity in fall 2020. UNH has reported about the problem getting worse during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gather Café opens at Great Bay Community College

Great Bay Community College has begun a three-year partnership with Gather, a local organization with a mission of helping to end food insecurity on the Seacoast through food distribution programs, its Gather Pantry Market, and collaborations.

The organization's newest endeavor is Gather Café, located in the college’s cafeteria at its campus in Portsmouth at Pease International Tradeport. The goal is helping to alleviate hunger on campus by creating nutritious food options for students at affordable prices and for free as needed.

Thursday, Sept. 8 marked the grand opening of the Gather Café, attended by staff members, community members, and Gather volunteers serving free meals to attendees. Representatives of the offices of the state's congressional delegation were present to offer congratulations.

“The bottom line is that the food insecurity issues here on this campus and across the system are so strong that we had to do something to alleviate that,” said Cheryl Lesser, president of Great Bay Community College. She noted the college already had a cupboard in collaboration with Gather, offering free food for students to take home to cook and quick snack items for in between classes.

“But we needed more,” Lesser said.

The café offers items such as packaged sandwiches for $4.50 and coffee for $1. Students get a 50% discount, meaning sandwiches are $2.25 and coffee is 50 cents.

“If the students don't have enough money for that, they can eat free,” Lesser said. “We will ensure that.”

The café is open to the community, not just students. It provides 60 meals every week, offering multiple choices per meal, served throughout the day and cooked by Gather volunteers. It also offers an after-hours refrigerator stocked with free food students can grab easily, even after the café is closed.

“It's a win-win for both organizations,” said Tania Marino, the Cooking 4 Community director at Gather.

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The college benefits from the services of Gather volunteers providing affordable food to students. In return, Gather has use of the college's 1,000-square-foot commercial-grade kitchen, which it simultaneously uses for its Cooking 4 Community program.

The Cooking 4 Community program partners with local restaurants and markets to save food that otherwise would have been thrown out due to minor appearance flaws or excess amounts, and turns it into about 600 meals that are distributed to underprivileged members of the community through Mobile Markets and the Gather Pantry Market every week.

“Eighty to 90% of what we use is food that's being repurposed that would otherwise be destined for landfill,” Marino said.

“I think a lot of people assume that the Seacoast is a fairly affluent area, and that I think there's a misperception about the number of food insecure that are actually in our communities,” she added.

What does food insecurity look like in NH?

In New Hampshire, about 94,450 people deal with food insecurity each year, including 24,360 children, according to the Feeding America Network, a U.S. hunger relief organization. That means 1 in 14 people are food insecure, including 1 in 11 children.

Val Connolly, a student at Great Bay Community College who serves on the student Government Association is a work study student with Gather. Connolly said food insecurity for students can take away from their ability to put all their energy toward learning.

“It's another stressor,” Connolly said. She added many students on top of their studies have to worry about how they are going to afford their classes, and many have to work while being full-time students.

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“We have a lot of students who are parents and have families that they contribute towards. So having our students have to worry and think about if their family is going to eat tonight, it really is distracting from their studies. It can really affect their mental health,” Connolly said.

“Their performance absolutely suffers because of it and it's not related in any way to their abilities, to their ambitions, to their interest in a course or the content or their program or anything. It's these external factors,” said Jordan Fansler, professor of history, sociology, and political science at Great Bay Community College. “Being able to take care of that kind of stuff here with something like this is exactly what a community college is meant to do.”

Fansler said many students have trouble opening up about facing food insecurity. He emphasized the Gather Café allows students to access food without having the public know about the financial struggles in their personal life, because it is open to everyone.

Cats' Cupboard at the University of New Hampshire

Cats' Cupboard, located in the Memorial Union Building at UNH, is a pantry that opened in the spring semester of 2022, also partnering with Gather. It provides canned, frozen, and packaged foods students can take home to cook for dinner, warm up in a microwave on campus, or even grab a quick snack to take to their next class.

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“The university as a whole wanted to build a more tight-knit community with their students and realized that, hey, some people might need some more help than the current programs we have already offered,” said Ryan Chagnon, who works at Cats' Cupboard.

Through the help of dietician Rochelle L’Italien, the cupboard provides nutritious options for students free of charge. All students are welcome to make use of the cupboard, which is open Tuesdays 1 to 8 p.m. and Fridays 5 to 8 p.m.

Currently the cupboard serves between five and 15 people per day, which is a number that UNH hopes to grow in order to serve more students as they become aware of the pantry’s presence on campus.

Cats' Cupboard receives food from Gather's Cooking 4 Communities program. The university has provided Gather with a kitchen on campus located in Barton Hall, where they take unserved, surplus food from the dining halls, as well as food from local grocery stores, UNH catering, and campus gardens and repurpose it for distribution through the program. A portion of the repurposed meals are offered in the pantry along with the other take-home food items.

UNH also offers a “Swipe it Forward” program. Typically, to utilize dining hall services, all students are required to swipe in, using their IDs. This can be done by paying for a meal plan, which offers unlimited “swipes” or a swipe plan, which offers a certain number of swipes per semester. However, for those that cannot afford a meal plan or swipe plan, they can request free swipes, which are provided by other students who donate swipes  for students who need them.

“I've always felt like it's just kind of what we do at UNH,” said Brennan Rumble, who works with the Cupboard. “We look out for other Wildcats.”

Making a difference at Great Bay Community College

Brittany Mulkigian, director of student life at Great Bay Community College, said  over the summer, they held a soft opening of the Gather Café to prepare for the start of school in September.

“I'll never forget the first day of school,” Mulkigian said. “I walked by and saw groups of students sitting at tables, eating, laughing, on their laptops, and I actually was brought to tears. It just was the exact vision that I wanted for a place like this. There’s so many emotions and stories, you know, students meeting each other, students coming together back on their campus, but also students knowing that there is a very consistent food source for them here at Great Bay Community College.”

The café is open to students, professors and the public Mondays through Fridays 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. with an after-hours refrigerator available for free at all times.

“It's a win-win,” Mulkigian said. “It's feeding students. It's giving them a sense of belonging, which contributes significantly to their persistence and completion of their education."

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Gather partners with Great Bay Community College, UNH to feed students