Ending Hunger, One Bike at a Time

 Hello, my name is Jack Spalding. I am currently interning with Campus Kitchens at UGA, in conjunction with the UGA Office of Sustainability. Campus Kitchens is a unique student-run program, which currently has chapters at many other universities around the nation. It is a food recovery program with the goal of alleviating local hunger. Campus Kitchens is currently providing weekly meal deliveries to senior citizens, specifically grandparents raising grandchildren, and senior citizens who need home delivered meals. The meals that are provided to them come from many different sources, such as the food bank, the Ugarden, and a handful of restaurants in the Athens area. Currently, I am working on making our deliveries more sustainable, through the implementation of a bicycle-cart program, with the help of Campus Kitchens coordinator Sarah Jackson, Kate Munden-Dixon who came up with the bike-cart idea, and Fred Smith of Bike Athens. Our goal is to be able use modified bicycles to pick up unused food from restaurants around Athens, as well as some sororities and fraternities on Milledge Ave. Fred Smith has already built a few prototypes of the bikes, and they all are extremely innovative and practical. The bike model which we have decided to use, is essentially an extended version of a standard mountain bike, with two ten-gallon tubs attached to the back of the bike, on either side of the back wheel. The benefits of using bicycles are many, as they do not necessitate the use motor vehicles, and they will also make our program more visible when we are seen riding around town. We have been in communication with many restaurants around town, and some such as Subway, Jimmy Johns, and Big City Bread have already told us that they would love to donate their unused food to our bike-cart pick ups. We hope to add a few more restaurants to this list, and plan to start the pick ups sometime in the next two weeks. As well as helping with the bike-cart program, I have been working out at the student-run Ugarden every Wednesday morning. Through our help out at the garden, which is located on South Milledge, past the loop, Campus Kitchens is able to harvest vegetables which we in turn also deliver to the seniors in need. Also, this upcoming Friday, on October 7th, Shannon Wilder, Sarah Jackson, and Nik Heynen will be speaking at the First Friday Eats at the East Campus Dining Hall. They will be discussing hunger in Athens and how Campus Kitchens and Athens Urban Food Collective are striving to end local hunger. If you are interested, this is a great way to learn more about problems such as this, and how to get involved. First Friday Eats occurs on the first Friday of each month and is a “green bag” bring your own lunch series which focuses on different topics pertaining to sustainability in our community. We will likely be needing bicycle “drivers” in the coming weeks, so if you have any interest or questions regarding the bike-cart program, feel free to email me at spalding@uga.edu.