General Mills Helps Expand Campus Kitchens Project

The General Mills Foundation, Minneapolis, has announced the creation of a $450,000 fund for The Campus Kitchen Project, a national network that uses campus dining facilities to help nonprofit groups fight hunger and its root causes. College students provide the energy, ideas and hands-on work cooking and delivering meals, allowing them to apply their majors directly toward solutions in their communities.

The Campus Kitchens Project, based in Washington, D.C., thrives on a unique cooperation between universities, businesses and nonprofit organizations in cities across the country. Unserved food from campus dining operations fuel the project, as volunteers cook in on-campus kitchens and distribute the meals to social service agencies in their communities. The program is currently active at Augsburg College in Minneapolis as well as at Dillard University, New Orleans, La.; Loyola College, Baltimore, Md.; Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis.; Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.; and Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Mo.

General Mills will provide $150,000 a year to the program for a minimum of three years, to help expand the program's national reach. With the creation of the fund, General Mills has committed to a partnership that reaches beyond financial support. The Campus Kitchens Project will utilize the grant to open Campus Kitchens in cities in which General Mills has an active presence through factories, warehouses or corporate offices. Each new Campus Kitchen will have the added benefit of exploring service-learning collaborations with General Mills employees on issues of nutrition, food safety, hunger education and business practices.

Local Campus Kitchens focus on serving families and seniors, children in after-school tutoring programs, and agencies experiencing budgetary strain. Partner nonprofit agencies in the existing six Campus Kitchen cities include the Salvation Army, Kids Cafes, Meals on Wheels, Covenant House, Habitat for Humanity, Area Agencies on Aging and the YMCA/YWCA. Individual Campus Kitchens also conduct special summer initiatives, such as Culinary Job Training for underemployed men and women, and Summer Food for Kids, an initiative that provides low-income kids with healthy meals in the summer months.

"General Mills has always made a commitment to the health and well-being of American communities. By partnering with The Campus Kitchens Project, the General Mills Foundation will be able to contribute to the real-world education of college students, as they learn about hunger and its root causes through their work with this program," said Chris Shea, president of the General Mills Foundation.

"General Mills has always been at the forefront of the fight against hunger, from donating food to taking a leadership role in developing stronger strategies to address hunger's root causes," said Robert Egger, president of DC Central Kitchen, Inc. and The Campus Kitchens Project, Inc. "With this partnership, we'll be continuing the fight on college and university campuses, where we'll not only use food and kitchens, but also the energetic minds of students and the experience of GM employees to take the battle to the next level."

Founded in 1988, DC Central Kitchen is based on the premise that waste is wrong: be it food, money, or the potential for people to live productive lives. With the founding of its affiliate, The Campus Kitchens Project, Inc. in October 2001, the organization's mission has taken on a national scope.  For more information on The Campus Kitchens Project, visit www.campuskitchens.org.

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