• Baylor Campus Kitchen wins national award for service

    Baylor Campus Kitchen

    How did Baylor Campus Kitchen earn a national award for their service to the Waco community? For starters, the student-led organization recovered five tons of food from Baylor dining halls and served 6,320 meals to local charities last year. But beyond the numbers, they represent Baylor student service in action as they get to know the people they serve through programs that enrich lives in addition to filling stomachs.

    Baylor Campus Kitchen was founded in 2008, bringing Baylor students together to focus on food waste and the fight against hunger in the Waco community. Student volunteers save food from dining halls that, instead of being thrown away, is packaged and shared with local non-profits, like Salvation Army, Mission Waco, Family Abuse Center and Shepherd’s Heart Food Pantry. They also harvest produce from the Baylor Community Garden which is placed in meals and brought to those organizations.

    This spring, Baylor Campus Kitchen was presented with the national “Going Beyond The Meal” award from the national Campus Kitchens Project, of which Baylor’s kitchen is an affiliate. National leaders cited Baylor Campus Kitchen as “exemplary” in using food to build relationships, citing “Roots Day” as an example. “Roots Day” brought together Waco senior citizens to enjoy a health fair, free food, cooking and gardening demonstrations, aerobics and other activities. The award was presented at the 2016 Food Waste and Hunger Summit in Fayetteville, Ark.

    “What makes the Campus Kitchens Project so great is the fact that providing meals is not our chief end. Our goal is to use meals as a means through which we are able to holistically eradicate poverty,” says Eric Pritt, Baylor Campus Kitchens coordinator and an AmeriCorps VISTA in Baylor’s Office of Community Engagement and Service. “‘Going Beyond the Meal’ is all about using food as a way to connect people, foster relationships and develop community between students, our campus and the people we serve.”

    In addition to earning awards, Baylor Campus Kitchen is growing in scope. For the last two years, Baylor Campus Kitchen has been open in the summer, too, providing Waco-area school children with food and educational programs to get the word out about Waco ISD’s Summer Food Service Program.

    Sic ’em, Baylor Campus Kitchen!