“More than 500 UC Berkeley students have applied for food stamps since January, up from 111 in all of 2016, and just 41 the year before, said Michael Altfest, spokesman for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which helps students fill out the forms. Last year, food bank representatives showed up once a month to help the students. Now they have to come every week to meet the need.”
Over the years, our Outreach team has helped thousands of low-income college students enroll in a federal program called CalFresh that provides funds for groceries.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently profiled our work with our partners at UC Berkeley, who have dramatically expanded the ways they support students in meeting their basic needs. UC Berkeley and ACCFB have been partnering for several years, both to provide food for the UC Berkeley Food Pantry and to help students apply for CalFresh. In recent months, our CalFresh clinic in UC Berkeley’s student union has become our largest outreach clinic.
Our partnership has emerged alongside a body of research that has further illuminated something many students and university staff have long known – that hunger and homelessness are pervasive on college campuses, from community colleges to Ivy League institutions, and all higher-education institutions in-between.
Read about the impact and growth of this work in the San Francisco Chronicle.
