by Xypher Pino

Last semester, Luke Butner and I collaborated with Village 401 and the Student Honors Organization (SHO) to host a week-long food drive to collect food that was donated to the Spartan Food Pantry over at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). We collected a total of 109 non-perishable food products thanks to the generous contributions of the Greensboro College community. Due to the massive success of the first event, Luke and I decided to bring back the food drive for a round two – and once again, the GC community did not disappoint.

Round two occurred from February 27 to March 3 and it was essentially the same as the first food drive. Our collaboration with Village 401 and SHO remained and we still looked for non-perishable food items. This time though, instead of just donating to UNCG’s Spartan Food Pantry, which all GC students can access, we also decided to donate to GC’s own food pantries, which are in three different locations around campus. Because these pantries also provide basic toiletry items, we asked for those products as well. 

The results we got were fantastic. We collected a total of 155 food products – 108 of which being canned goods like chickpeas, 34 being boxed goods such as nutrigrain bars and 7 of them being bagged goods such as rice. On top of that, we also collected multiple bags of various other things such as chips, single-use utensils and toiletry items such as dental and female hygiene products. We hoped to obtain more than 100 products for this semester’s food drive and due to GC’s generosity, we easily exceeded those expectations.

 We thank all those that contributed to the food drive. Without a doubt, you will continue to see this event in the next coming semesters. For the future, we are planning to expand the food drive – instead of only donating to UNCG’s Spartan Food Pantry and GC’s own pantries, we will also look into donating our goods and products to Greensboro’s local food banks. With this, we can help more people and we are able to provide food to citizens of Greensboro that need it.

If the GC community remains active and involved in these events that we host, these plans will definitely come into fruition! Once again, we gladly appreciate all those that donated to the food drive and the time you all spent. We would also like to send special thanks to Dr. Robert Brewer for assisting in every step of the way of the food drive, from start to finish.