More than one in four Auburn University undergraduate students are food insecure, according to the most recent of the yearly wellness surveys conducted by the Office of Student Affairs.
But with the introduction of Share Meals to Auburn’s campus, students and organizations are hoping to minimize food insecurity at Auburn.
Share Meals is a free app designed by Jonathan Chin to end college hunger.
Chin developed the app as a student with the intent to fight hunger on his own campus at New York University, and now he is trying to spread the app to campuses across the country.
The basic idea behind the app is to let people know where to get free food. Organizations can post whenever they have an event with free food, and students can also offer to buy a meal for another student.
As part of Auburn’s hunger capstone class, the final course required to fulfill a minor in hunger studies, students develop and carry out a project to fight hunger in some capacity.
Kate Thornton, director of academic and research initiatives for the Hunger Solutions Institute and instructor of the capstone course, said the impetus behind bringing Share Meals to Auburn is relaying news of free food most effectively.
“There were lots of different places distributing food either just as a part of community outreach or as trying to meet an emergency food need, but there wasn’t just one place that students could go to get that information, and we thought Share Meals could provide that,” Thornton said.
Being in charge of the advocacy portion of the capstone project, John-Mark Baker, senior in nutrition wellness, coordinated with the developer of the app to adapt it to Auburn’s campus.
Baker said the capstone class is working with Tiger Dining to incorporate the feature on the app that allows students to send campus dining dollars to other students or transfer leftover money to someone else.
“We’re trying to normalize the conversation around hunger,” Thornton said. “So helping students that are struggling to meet their basic needs know that there’s resources for you, and it’s not bad or saying anything about who you are as a person if you access the resources that are available to you.”
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