David Rudderham
Connector Editor
Food insecurity. The definition of the phrase is “inconsistent access to adequate food” and some students at UMass Lowell suffer from it. A new non-profit organization that just launched this semester, Support Our Students, or SOS, aims to create solutions to it.
UML financial records have indicated an increase in students whose families make less than $30,000 annually. In 2007, roughly 28 percent of the UML student body came from these families. In 2012, that number went up to 38 percent.
Mary Tauras, a master’s student in community social psychology and one of the six co-founders of the organization, outlined just how serious the issue is. “We do have homeless students,” said Tauras. “Some live in their car or use the campus recreational center to shower.”
Tauras and her colleagues plan on running the organization to get rid of the social stigma placed on people suffering from food insecurity and poverty. “We’ve developed a very easy process. We didn’t want to be invasive at all.”
The organization has cooperated with University Dining to create a program where students can donate one of their guest meals to those who need it through SOS. The non-profit wants to use this program, as well as their meal scholarship and coordinated events, to raise awareness, fight the social stigma against the poor and help students find sustainable solutions to food insecurity in the community.
“We advocate a more long-term solution. Right now, students in need are really only receiving a couple meals a week through us,” says Tauras. Still, the organization’s uphill battle against food insecurity is far from hopeless.
SOS was founded by a group who won a DifferenceMaker challenge. That challenge had yielded $7,000 dollars to their recently-launched organization. They’ve continued to raise money through spreading awareness and using UML’s independent crowdsourcing program Hawk Hatch.
They have also planned to get help through “Entrepreneurship For All,” (formerly known as “Merrimack Valley Sandbox”). “Entrepreneurship For All” is a non-profit that gathers local businesses and tries to help entrepreneurs, which could help with economic issues in Lowell.
SOS also has corporate sponsorship from Chowder Factory, #CollegePower and MinutemanPress International Inc.
Support Our Students has also received cash donations from around 200 students. While these numbers may seem small against the alarming statistics of impoverished students, keep in mind that the organization was just launched last month. The launch has been planned since December of 2013 and SOS plans on only growing from here.
In order to get an idea of what they were up against, they released a campus survey at the end of August. From the sample, 24 percent of students were experiencing food insecurity. A mentor to the program, Professor Khanh Dinh, was the primary investigator of the survey.
All of this planning, coordination with other organizations and searching for funds has kept the founders, workers and volunteers for SOS very busy. “It’s been a crazy three months,” says Tauras, in reference to this past summer in which they were gearing up for the fall launch.
In addition to operating their meal scholarship and donation program, SOS has coordinated with others to create events intended to spread awareness. On Thursday, Oct. 23 there will be a blindfolded food-tasting contest where participants will have to guess which food is the healthiest. This is done in collaboration with UTEC, as they’re letting SOS use their café for the event.
SOS will also host an event in preparation for National Food Day on Friday, Oct. 24.
“Poverty is stigmatized,” says Tauras. The ultimate goal of these events is to battle against poverty and food insecurity and to create a culture where students in need can ask for help according to Tauras.
If you have any comments or questions for the author email david_rudderham@student.uml.edu
