Bear Pantry podcast

The Bear Pantry is a resource at MSU that helps students, staff, and faculty who experience food insecurity. It aims to provide access to needed resources and address the issue of food insecurity, which affects 36% of college students in the US. The pantry offers extended hours, workshops, and ready-to-go meals called Bear Boxes. Anyone can use the pantry without income qualifiers. To get involved, you can fill out a membership form and volunteer. The pantry also provides emergency packs with non-perishable food items. The Center for Community Engagement, which includes the Bear Pantry, aligns with the public affairs mission by promoting community engagement, ethical leadership, and cultural competence. Hi, I'm Lucy Schaefer, your local MSU student, and this is column 115, Informative Speech, Podcast Edition. For our first episode, I'd like to talk about the Bear Pantry. The Bear Pantry is part of the Center for Community Engagement, or CCE, here on campus, and it is located in the PSU, or Plaster Student Union, room 131. It is a relatively new addition to our campus, opening in April 2019. The Bear Pantry is meant to help out any student, staff, or faculty member that is part of the MSU community and experiences food insecurity. Their vision is a campus community in which everyone has access to needed resources. This mission is important because 49 million people in the United States are food insecure, or one in every six people. That number is from the nonprofit organization Feeding America's 2022 report. Do you have a group of six people in your life? My immediate family is six people, and this statistic is much more personal when I think of it that way. The Bear Pantry website reports on a 2018 study conducted by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab that found that 36% of U.S. college students experience food insecurity. That ratio is one out of 2.7, an even smaller number. I met with Alex Johnson, the director of the CCE, and a self-described bear for life, to gain an expert view on the topic. Here's what he said. A lot of times, students can feel like there's a barrier from coming to the pantry because of a lack of knowledge or a stigma around going to a food pantry. If someone was nervous, I'd encourage them to come to the Bear Pantry for a tour or as a volunteer. Now that we've looked at what the Bear Pantry is and why it's important, let's focus in on some real-life benefits the Bear Pantry has brought to our community. Our MSU student-run newspaper, Standard, has several articles on the Bear Pantry and the CCE. One discusses changes made to the Bear Pantry in the 2022-2023 school year, including extended hours and workshops for students to learn life skills. The longer hours are meant to help students understand the benefits of the Bear Pantry The longer hours are meant to increase the pantry's reach and allow more of the MSU community access to what the Bear Pantry has to offer. Another program introduced that year was Bear Boxes, or ready-to-go meals that could be picked up, sort of like the HelloFresh business model, if you're familiar with that. In 2023, the Standard released another article about the Bear Pantry in which Alex Johnson reported that the Bear Pantry expects to serve 850 people in a given year. Next, let's look at how to get involved. First, what should you do if you need assistance in the Bear Pantry? Your first step is to fill out the membership form. This will make you a member for the current academic year. The form can be filled out on the website or in person when you enter the pantry. Then, collect food, school supplies, and hygiene items free of charge. The Bear Pantry's hours are posted on their website, and once you fill out the form to establish your membership, grocery to-go is often needed throughout the academic year. When I was talking to Alex Johnson, I asked him about who qualifies for help for the Bear Pantry. He told me that any member of the faculty, staff, or student body can use the Bear Pantry. There are no qualifiers based on income or anything else. Another thing Alex and I touched on in our meeting was how to get involved as a volunteer. He talked about how often students want to get involved with volunteering, but don't know places in Springfield or don't feel comfortable in the area yet. If that's you, you can reach out to the Bear Pantry or the CCE online through the Missouri State domain. You can electronically sign up for volunteer opportunities there or send an email. Or, you can simply visit the CCE, which is right next to the pantry, with any questions you have. I dropped in unannounced, and Alex Johnson was very friendly and welcoming. The CCE also has a community engagement blog. It has a community engagement blog. You can find it by searching Missouri State Center for Community Engagement in your browser and clicking the drop-down menu. The CCE blog reports on many things. One of their recent posts from October 22nd is about emergency packs, or EPACs. These are bags of non-perishable food and items that students can collect from three different places on campus. Number one, the Bear Club Pantry, located in the library. Number two, the R-Cash Student Success Center in Strong Hall. And number three, the Forsyth Athletic Center. This one is for student athletes only. The packs are designed to provide students with food for two to three days and are packaged in a grab-and-go style, which is different from the regular pantry. If you're interested in a list of what is in these packets, you're going to have to go look it up yourself, because it would get very boring if I read that entire list. But again, you can get to the blog through the Missouri State Center for Community Engagement website and click on the drop-down menu. Now, you may be asking, where would she get to have us connect to the public affairs mission? After all, that was a big part of the assignment. To me, it's an easy connection. The Center for Community Engagement is quite literally public affairs. After all, one of the pillars is right in the name. But not only is this CCE community engagement, it's also ethical leadership with volunteering for a good cause and cultural competence, taking the time to understand each other's struggles and points of view, and then taking the initiative to help them out however you can. This is public affairs. In conclusion, if you take one thing from this podcast, it should be that the Bear Pantry is available to help with any food insecurity you may be coping with, and they have made the process very efficient and easy. You are right as a member of the MSU student, faculty, or staff to visit the Bear Pantry, and you should take advantage of that if or when you need it. There's no shame in asking for help. Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.