Purdue Dining teams up with local shelter to slash food insecurity

The dining team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., has partnered with a student organization and a local homeless shelter to provide leftover food to homeless families.

The donated meals will be supplied from The Gathering Place, a buffet concept on campus, and will be transported to Lafayette Transitional Housing Center twice a week by students in the Purdue chapter of Timmy Global Health.

Before the donations could be received, the dining team had to provide labels for the meals and a list of their ingredients, as well as purchase sanitary food storage items for transport. Student volunteers were required to pass a food safety course.

The amount of food donated will depend on customer traffic. The university was able to supply 109 pounds of food to the housing center for its first donation.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to be involved in helping with food insecurity,” Greg Minner, director of dining and catering, said in a release. “The students of Timmy Global Health understood there was a need and we were able to work with them and LTHC to figure out how we can help.”