Submitted by: Vicki Parish, vparish@uca.edu on 04/15/2025
Campus buildings were challenged this spring to meet or exceed donations brought in by the 2024-2025 LEAD Program cohort (one-time fall donation). While the following buildings got close, no one building beat the LEAD cohort’s donations. We still want to give kudos to the following buildings who donated over 100 pounds to the Bear Essentials Food Pantry (BEFP):
⭐️ College of Business – donated 100 pounds
⭐️ College Square – donated 145 pounds
⭐️ Manion Hall – donated 360 pounds
⭐️ Torreyson Library & Torreyson West – donated 124 pounds
We also want to give a special thanks to the CAHSS Artists in Residence Program for partnering with the Feed the Den Food Drive to also donate 1500 cans of soup from the labyrinth on display for their 25th anniversary celebration to the BEFP, averaging to around 938 pounds! 🥫
Altogether, our campus community came together with this food drive to collect a grand total of 2,381 pounds of food! And that doesn’t even include any one-time or new payroll deduction donations given to the BEFP Foundation account.
We would like to give a special shout-out to a couple of people that made this food drive possible: Gary Broyles in the Physical Plant & Will Baker in the BEFP/OARS. Thank you also to all of the LEAD building coordinators and building administrators for helping to maintain the boxes and encourage colleagues to give their best.
Will Baker shares his sentiment from the BEFP perspective, “let me start by thanking Emily Hall, Vicki Parish and everyone else who had something to do with this project. I would like to thank everyone who donated, we couldn’t do what we do without you. Food drives like this help us keep our shelves stocked with a minimum impact on the money we have to spend. We will forever be grateful knowing that we all played a part in helping our UCA community thrive.”
While the Feed the Den food drive is over, the need is great and does not have an end date. Would you consider committing to a monthly donation to the BEFP fund? Every little bit helps: $2, $5, $10, $25, or more!
https://connect.uca.edu/s/1618/index.aspx?sid=1618&gid=1&pgid=1206&cid=2179
