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Very rarely, the story of how an organization was founded is as engaging as the work of the organization itself. Such is the case with The Campus Kitchens Project (CKP), a thriving and expanding national program that facilitates student volunteers in turning unserved food from university dining facilities into meals that are distributed to agencies and individuals in their communities.

The seed of an idea that would become the CKP was planted after Wake Forest University (WFU) juniors Karen Borchert and Jessica Jackson, the organization's co-directors, spent a semester abroad studying in Venice, Italy. They found themselves cooking meals for the 22 students with whom they shared a house on the Grand Canal, and discovered that sharing food helped to foster feelings of community and friendship among the group.

When they returned to North Carolina for the spring semester, the young women found that they missed what they termed the simple act of sharing meals with others. Jackson explains, "For each of us, for our own reasons, breaking bread with others—be they friends or strangers—is a powerful act that brings people together on a very basic level. Because we both have always included service in our lives to some extent, there was no great leap from sharing food we had made with our friends to sharing it with people who were not yet friends."


Mayor Morton of Evanston, IL prepares garden salad with volunteer at Northwestern University's Campus Kitchen.	Marquette University students prepare holiday pies.

Borchert decided to reach out to the community to find individuals in need of hot, nutritious food delivered to their homes. But she did not get a positive response from any of the eight churches she contacted. Undeterred, she made a call to the First Presbyterian Church of Winston-Salem.

That request yielded a prayer list with names and numbers, and Borchert and Jackson began phoning people on the list. A short time later they were preparing meals twice a week for a mother of newborn triplets, an amputee and a woman with emphysema.

Less than a year later, what had begun as a hobby had flourished into an organization called Homerun, a WFU Volunteer Service Corps agency, as Borchert's and Jackson's friends became involved in their project. Using a kitchen on the WFU campus allowed the students to prepare more than 400 meals per month which were delivered to individuals, families and organizations, including: a drug rehabilitation halfway house, a Ronald McDonald House, a local children's home and an AIDS hospice. Funding for Homerun came from community donations, food drives at local supermarkets and on-campus fundraisers.

Although they had discussed turning Homerun into a nonprofit organization, the two friends each had their own goals to pursue after graduation. Borchert went to work for DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) in Washington, DC. She was excited to find that DCCK encompassed not only some of the elements of Homerun such as service and building community through food but also included job training and food recycling.

Jackson's path took her back overseas, this time to Uzbekistan, where she worked as a primary English education volunteer for the Peace Corps. In addition to teaching at a local school, Jackson helped to plan and implement an empowerment-based summer camp for Muslim and Russian teenage girls. She and Borchert stayed in touch through letters in which they shared their experiences while continuing to discuss turning Homerun into a national campus-based meal program.

Soon Borchert took the next step and proposed her idea for combining components of Homerun and DCCK to Robert Egger, DCCK's founder. He responded with enthusiasm and started to work on obtaining funding for what would be called The Campus Kitchens Project. Seed money came from the Sodexho Foundation.

Borchert moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to establish the pilot program at St. Louis University, and operations began in October of 2001.

In order to recruit volunteers for the pilot program, Borchert worked closely with the Center for Leadership and Community Services to host information and recruiting sessions. Borchert also "...recruited some students whose scholarships required community service hours," Jackson recalled.


St. Louis University students sort fresh produce.	Karen Borchert (standing left) and Jessica Jackson (kneeling left) with the graduating class of the 2002 Culinary Arts Training Program at the St. Louis University Campus Kitchen.

When the September 11th attacks forced the Peace Corps to evacuate its volunteers in countries surrounding Afghanistan, Jackson returned home and in January joined Borchert in St. Louis to begin expansion of the program. Additional sites now hosting Campus Kitchens include: Dillard University, Augsburg College, Northwestern Univeristy, Loyola College, and Marquette University.

Students, faculty and on-campus dining service professionals have logged 18,500 hours of volunteer time both preparing and delivering more than 97,000 meals. The students' efforts don't stop at their clients' front doors; companionship and mentoring opportunities have become integral parts of this program whose motto is: "Teach. Reach. Feed. Lead."

Northwestern University senior Katie Hasty joined the CKP when she heard about a volunteer opportunity that would be a one- or two-night commitment. She said that she saw needs not being met and that student leadership and direction were needed. "I started doing a fundraiser evening — it was a social thing — and then I was passionate about it. I saw volunteers who needed to be served because they were serving others. We hung out together outside of the volunteer space. We don't do it because we have to but to build community. This is my last year in school, and it's cool to start something that will continue after I'm gone," Hasty said.

Hasty's first Campus Kitchens task was cooking, and now she delivers meals to clients. She said she didn't know how America treats the elderly before volunteering with this program. By delivering meals, "...I get the direct contact. I see the same faces every week and see how they're doing. I want to be able to know what happened to them that week. It doesn't feel like a chore. I'm not being trite. These are important lessons, and I have to carry them with me for the rest of my life," Hasty added.

CKP works with university professors to enable the program to provide valuable real-world experience to students majoring in business, nutrition, geriatrics, nonprofit management and marketing. Each campus program is supervised by a DCCK staffer, and all student volunteers receive training in proper food handling.

During the summer months, CKP conducts its Culinary Arts Training Program, a learning opportunity for underemployed men and women. The eight-to-ten week programs teach job hunting skills in addition to food service skills, proper sanitation and food safety. The meals students prepare while learning go out to the community.

Plans for 2004 include expansion to at least five additional campuses, thanks in part to a three-year grant from the General Mills Foundation. "In addition to that partnership, we hope to have applications available by late Spring for institutions interested in hosting a Campus Kitchen," Jackson said. If you're interested in getting an application, send an email to info@campuskitchens.org and include your name and title, name and location of the institution, mailing and email address and phone and fax numbers. To learn more about CKP, go to www.campuskitchens.org.

Watch for the Next Issue of Circle! on June 7