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With rising inflation and COVID-19 relief funds ending, one Salvation Army location in Syracuse is struggling to deal with food insecurity in the city.

“Federal and local governments were saying, ‘here’s all this money to bulk purchase food to feed people because people can’t work’ and essentially all that has stopped now,” said Allison Brooks, the director of emergency services at the Syracuse-area Salvation Army.

Feeding America, a nonprofit that connects food banks across the country, marked September as Hunger Action Month. Throughout the month, organizations in Syracuse — including Syracuse University, the Food Recovery Network and the Samaritan Center — have collected leftovers, pushed for greater community awareness and held food drives.

The Food Recovery Network, a campus student organization, goes to Graham Dining Hall to collect leftover food and transport it to local organizations that serve meals to Syracuse residents. Elliot Salas, the organization’s president, said many students question why SU does not transport its own leftover food to local organizations.

“I really want to be as important as the Student Association because the Student Association has their own little office and they have all these resources,” Salas, a junior majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, said. “Food recovery has a classroom where we meet to do all these meetings and that even gives you a perspective on where the school stands on whether or not food insecurity is a problem.”

SU itself also conducted work for the month, with the university’s Office of Community Engagement dedicating Sept. 13 to 17 as Food Insecurity Awareness Week. The week ended with a food drive near the JMA Wireless Dome at the Sept. 17 football game against Purdue University, an event Brooks referred to as “Dome Day.”

High levels of poverty and food insecurity both on and off campus catalyzed the creation of the awareness week, said Cydney Johnson, SU’s vice president of community engagement. Food insecurity is also a major concern, as Syracuse has the highest number of children living in poverty of any major city in the United States. According to 2020 census data, 48.4% of children in Syracuse live below the poverty line.

“Syracuse University has a long history of supporting food drives for community organizations, and the Salvation Army has always been a really great partner with us for food drives,” Johnson said. “So, we decided we were going to take advantage of a great football game.”

Local volunteers, such as teachers, doctors, SU students and players from Syracuse Rush, a local youth soccer club, stationed the collection bins in several locations around campus.

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The Salvation Army Syracuse Area Services have already served 185,000 meals this year and 140,000 meals in 2021 through their volunteers, said Brooks. The office of community engagement, however, was not originally aware of local efforts that promote food security.

“As we brought attention and awareness, we were also made aware and learned of so many wonderful student-led organizations and efforts to combat food insecurity,” Johnson said.

But many SU students are not aware of the severity of food insecurity in Syracuse, Johnson said.

“We’ve done Dome Day, but to be honest, sometimes our cans for collecting goods are filled with garbage when people walk by,” Brooks said. “We want to bring some awareness to show that we’re collecting food for the poor.”

The importance of the food drive spans beyond providing relief to the local area. Brooks said the Salvation Army is looking to build lifelong volunteers and donors for not just themselves, but any local food and housing program.

During the awareness week, SU highlighted a series of organizations both on and off campus in campus-wide emails. The university promoted the Samaritan Center, which provides hot meals to locals in Syracuse. Student athletes also sponsored Blessings in a Backpack, which gives local students a backpack full of food for a weekend.

SU also highlighted associate dean and professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Colleen Heflin’s research on redesigning food stamps to better serve people who use them on WCNY radio show’s most recent Thursday Morning Roundtable.

Johnson sees the university’s role as the catalyst for local organizations to do the work they do best.

“We see our work as not only the messenger, but the supporter and the pathway so that our community members can support each other and support our neighbors,” Johnson said.

All the involved organizations aim to provide more awareness and aid to food insecurity in the area, Brooks added, especially as many SU community members do not come from a background of food insecurity.

“Hunger has many faces,” Brooks said. “We have a lot of working people, working families, working veterans, that have jobs and have families and have homes and just can’t make ends meet.”

Published on September 26, 2022 at 1:18 am

Contact Rosina: rlboehm@syr.edu