Students in need of food during the winter break can turn to a service from the Knights Helping Knights Pantry that, thanks to the help of parents of Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Knights, will provide bags with emergency supplies.<\/p>\n
Several members of the Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Parent & Family Philanthropy Council on Dec. 9 will pack about 50 bags from nearly 270 pounds of donated food. This service is to help meet the nutritional needs of hungry students while the pantry is closed from Dec. 13 to Jan. 9. The bags will be filled with tuna, pasta, tomato sauce, canned vegetables and ramen. Students can pick up bags from the Student Care Services office until Dec. 22, and again starting Jan. 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese parents understand that some students literally spend their last penny on a textbook and they can\u2019t eat. It\u2019s provoked the parents to want to do more,\u201d said Annie O\u2019Donnell, director of Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Parent & Family Philanthropy. The parent council is just under two years old and provides parents connections to the university and a platform for parents to donate their time, talent and resources to Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½.<\/p>\n
The bag-packing is the parent council\u2019s first hands-on service project. It stemmed from many of the council\u2019s members feeling shocked and surprised when they learned students, too, struggle with hunger.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just did not enter into what I thought going to college was,\u201d said Karen Manglardi, co-chair of the parent council. \u201cThe general thought was you went to college, you lived in a dorm, you had a meal plan, and you got involved with clubs and groups. I just never imagined there would be hungry students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manglardi learned of the pantry from her mother, who attends Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Learning Institute for Elders classes, and her son, Joey, whose classmate was one of the LEAD Scholars students who founded the pantry in 2009. Manglardi remembers her reaction being, \u201cWhy? There aren\u2019t college students who don\u2019t have money for food. That can\u2019t be.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says now her reaction was wrong.<\/p>\n
The pantry served more than 6,000 students in its founding year, and in the 2015-16 academic year, it served more than 13,000 students. It also has expanded to include clothing, a blazer-loaning service, fresh produce from the Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Arboretum and more. The pantry added these services to draw more students in hopes of destigmatizing help and bringing the issue of hunger to light.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunger is a silent problem,\u201d said Roslyn Burttram, parent council member. Her son, Jackson, is a freshman studying engineering. \u201cI have a friend who has struggled with hunger and has been to food pantries. Other friends told me their families needed assistance when they were growing up. These are very good friends of mine that I had known for years before I ever knew of their struggles. Hunger is not something that people will just come out and tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pantry also offered emergency-supply bags over Thanksgiving break while campus was closed Nov. 24-27. All but three of the 25 emergency-supply bags were taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students in need of food during the winter break can turn to a service from the Knights Helping Knights Pantry that, thanks to the help of parents of Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Knights, will provide bags with emergency supplies. Several members of the Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ Parent & Family Philanthropy Council on Dec. 9 will pack about 50 bags from nearly 270 pounds of donated…","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":74835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,6,27],"tags":[1682,6313,4185,4489,4886],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-75203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-community","category-student-life","tag-ferrell-commons","tag-knights-pantry","tag-sdes","tag-student-union","tag-ucf-foundation"],"yoast_head":"\n