Community College Opens Permanent Food Pantry For Students

Student at Kennedy-King College now have access to a newly opened Healthy Student Market on campus where they can receive free food. Photo Credit: Katherine Newman
Student at Kennedy-King College now have access to a newly opened Healthy Student Market on campus where they can receive free food. Photo Credit: Katherine Newman

Community College Opens Permanent Food Pantry For Students

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

At the start of the school year, Kennedy-King College officially opened its Healthy Student Market which is a permanent food pantry on campus in Englewood where students can come to receive fresh produce and shelf-stable items at no cost.

Kennedy-King College is the sixth out of seven schools in the City Colleges of Chicago network to open a permanent Healthy Student Market and it was made possible through a partnership with the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

The Healthy Student Market is in the Y Building at Kennedy-King College in Room 114 and operates on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Thursdays from 2 p.m. to 6 pm.

“The food pantry, which we call the healthy student market here at Kennedy-King College was established because a number of our students are suffering from food insecurity and we want to make sure that we can eliminate that barrier for them when they are thinking about their academic studies. Instead of them thinking about where they are getting their next meal from or how they can help support their families at home, we want to provide a resource for them to remove that barrier,” said Michael Johns, director of Student Activities at Kennedy-King College.

Before the Healthy Student Market opened at Kennedy-King College, there was a pop-up food pantry that would visit the campus in Englewood every month. Upon seeing the need for this resource at Kennedy-King College and surveying students on what their greatest barriers to education were, City Colleges of Chicago committed to putting permanent food pantries at all seven of their institutions across the city by 2020, according to information provided by City Colleges of Chicago.

“It is a great thing to have this food pantry here because being a college student not everyone has financial aid and some people have to pay out of pocket for their classes and a lot of times that comes out of their food or rent budget or anything else that person might be going through so when they know they don’t have to worry about food every week it’s a benefit,” Jervon Brown, a student at Kennedy-King College.

Some of the items that can be found at the Healthy Student Market at Kennedy-King College are shelf-stable goods like rice, canned vegetables, beans, and oatmeal. There is also refrigerated food like fresh produce and eggs. Students can come and take what they need for themselves or their families.

“In terms of capacity, we can truly handle our entire student body. It might take us some time in order to get through them but I think at any given time that we are open if we had somewhere between 100 to 200 people we could serve them in that time frame,” said Johns.

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