By Maisarah Miskoon

From left: Maisarah Miskoon, Rik Sawyer, Madelyn Holm, Daniel Shaw

Working as a Community to Battle Hunger, Poverty, and Malnutrition

Orono, ME – The Maine Hunger Dialogue conference was held on University of Maine’s Orono campus on October, 16th and 17th. Institutions from all over the state, including Colby, University of Maine Presque Isle (UMPI) and Ford Kent, came to learn from one another while collaborating to come up with solutions to help students and people in their communities.

The panel of keynote speakers for this event was top-notched and inspired all of us to be better equipped to face the hunger issue on our school campuses. We listened to keynote speakers intently as Kristen Miale, the President of the Good Shepherd Food Bank (GSFB), and Dr. Alastair Summerlee, former President of the University of Guelph in Canada and currently the chair of the Hunger Solutions Institute in Auburn, sharing with the room of more than 80 individuals the statistics of how food insecurity has affected the state, nation, and world.
Just the first day alone, we listened to three other speakers, among them Jim Hanna, the Director of the Cumberland County Food Security Council, who quoted that 14.3% of households in the U.S. struggle to put food on the table (USDA in 2013) as well as Alexandra Moore, the Director of Development and Communications at the DC Central Kitchen.
Daniel Shaw and I also represented SMCC on the first panel of the conference as we presented what the Captain’s Cupboard, our on-campus food pantry, has been up to and the significant role the Captain’s Cupboard play in our campus. We were joined by Veggies-for-All, a food bank farm at Unity College, which offers a work-study program for students on campus.
Every single person who attended the conference also helped prepare and pack over 10,000 meals for our campus pantries. All of the participants had numerous opportunities to share experiences with one another, with the organizers for the convention, with the keynote speakers as well as with representatives from Sodexo food services and the Good Shepherd Food Bank. In addition to providing food services to schools and communities, they both offer scholarships to students such as the Stephen J. Brady Stop Hunger Scholarship.
There were no words to describe how passionate and enthusiastic everyone was for this event as we discussed our ideas and how to improve on our current projects on another panel. Madelyn Holm, representing SMCC, discussed the history, mission, and what we had achieved so far within our campus. All of this was for naught if she and Rik Sawyer, the Co-Founder of the Cupboard, did not push on to make the Cupboard a reality through experimentation, dedication, and a whole lot of energy.
It was comforting to learn how much people were interested in our model for the Captain’s Cupboard and the homelessness survey which sparked off the entire project as well as the support from the Presidents of SMCC, former President James Ortiz and current President Ronald Cantor, who gave us the space for the Cupboard at the Captain’s House last year.
This article is not a pitch for world peace, or world hunger. The article does not even aim to change your life in the course of the next five minutes. The article, however, hopes to encourage students to participate and do something worthwhile. In doing so, we can and we will affect change in our lives, and in our community. So what are you waiting for?