Kira Orchard, President of Welfare & Inclusivity at the Students’ Union at the Food Pantry from the @supresidents Instagram.
Falmouth and Exeter Students’ Union is helping students struggling in the face of the cost of living crisis with a food pantry scheme.
The pantry helps to provide students with long-shelf items. It’s like many other food banks but this one is made especially for the students as some have expressed feeling guilty having to go to food banks and taking food away from others.
The pantry is located on the Penryn Campus in front of the Students’ Union office inside and is accessible to students working on either campus.
Kira Orchard, the union President of Welfare and Inclusivity, is in charge of organising this help. The scheme started in the beginning of February, and Kira is looking to keep it running as “it is a needed resource.” If you want to know for how long this scheme is going to remain for, you can keep an eye on their instagram account; @supresidents.
A student ambassador at Penryn has shared that students have come to her and voiced their fears of having to prioritise between paying for travel to be able to attend their classes and buying food. These fears of food prices have made many students bare difficulties on being able to sustain themselves with the right amount of food and have caused them to have to upkeep part-time jobs alongside their education.
A survey from the NUS in 2022, which had 3,500 university students participate, showed that more than 1 in 10 students were accessing food banks and use had increased by 6% in the previous six months. It also found that a third of students had no more than £50 a month to sustain themselves. The prices have of course increased even more since then.
Looking ahead, students are hoping that this organised help remains. Many have expressed their views on it being a helpful tool to prevent food waste by being able to provide food from their own shelves that they don’t need rather than contributing it towards waste. Here’s hoping that Universities follow the lead and organise help for their own students.
Listen to what the students of Falmouth think of this new help: