Making the world a little better one sack lunch at a time is what the Benedictine Hunger Coalition club strives for.
The Hunger Coalition was started by Professor Richard Coronado in 1984. Coronado teaches Economics.
“I was interested in econ to better understand the things like poverty and the great inequalities in the world. I have always been curious about this, and the idea was that wherever I am I will be involved with different social action things,” says Coronado.
Hunger Coalition started because of a recession in 1982 where a lot of people lost their jobs. A group of people along with Coronado decided that they wanted to do something instead of just talk.
Their first year they had about 25 people giving up their Wednesday meal swipe. Currently, they have more than 350 students skipping meals so others in the community can eat. They use the money that would go towards the student’s meal swipe to make sack lunches that get delivered to families on Saturday mornings. They deliver 175 sack lunches all year. For 26 weeks, students deliver lunches, and the other 26 weeks faculty and staff deliver them.
The Hunger Coalition has student officers who help oversee the meal deliveries on Saturday mornings. Jenna Sokolowski, senior, has been a part of hunger coalition for about a year now. She explains how there are many ways that hunger coalition impacts the community and the volunteers.
“It’s super cool to see the reactions of people when they see a college student coming to their door to deliver their food,” she said.
“The typical college student that is pictured in our society is sleeping in until noon and not getting up and doing service on a Saturday morning, so to kind of rewrite that story is cool to be a part of.”
“It is also great to connect with people you are living so close to that you would not encounter otherwise,” Sokolowski said.
Helping in the community and serving can be so rewarding. Service hours are available and the benefit of reaching out to the community that Benedictine is in and serving the people around us. Benedictine Hunger Coalition’s inspiration since their founding is Mother Theresa. Her motto on hunger is, “If you can’t feed 100 people, then just feed one.”
Anyone can help volunteer with Hunger Coalition. They meet in the cafeteria every Saturday morning at 9:30.
