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The Saluki Food Pantry is a direct response to the need among the student population for more resources to fight food insecurity -- the lack of nutritious food. With rising fees, textbook costs, and living expenses, it has become increasingly difficult for students to juggle the costs of living with the costs of obtaining a university degree, and thus many students are finding themselves choosing between essentials such as food and the costs of college. The Saluki Food Pantry cares deeply about SIU students experiencing hunger and hold them in the center of all we do. Our goal is to develop and sustain a food pantry on campus to provide food assistance to students in times of need, helping them to stay in school and meet their educational goals.
At SIU we believe that no student should be hungry. So our challenge is obvious: how to move from today, where more than 31% of students on campus need food assistance, to tomorrow in which no student at SIU faces hunger. The Saluki Food Pantry believes that students facing hunger issues can create their own solutions through knowledge. We will provide a means for students to gain skills such as shopping, cooking, budgeting, gardening, nutrition, as well as making students aware of the additional resources available to them on campus and in the community.
Our goal is to reduce hunger today by ensuring no student misses a meal due to lack of resources, ensure students have access to adequate supply of nutritious food, and ensure that students seeking food assistance can find it. We also hope to engage our campus community by increasing awareness of food and hunger issues and building more engaged students and campus leaders. And finally, reconnect Food and Health by promoting good nutrition, contributing to campus wellness, and impacting lifelong eating habits.
We celebrated the opening of the Saluki Food Pantry with a ribbon cutting on October 21. News coverage from the event can be seen here. More information about the food pantry can be found on our website.
