Big Red Food Drive benefits Friendship Donations Network     

Cornell Students for Hunger Relief, Becca and Stephanie.

ITHACA, NY – Every year, at the end of the spring semester, Cornell students have the opportunity to support local huger-relief efforts. This year students donated 3,078 pounds of food to Friendship Donations Network (FDN) through the Big Red Food Drive.

Now in its fifth year, the Big Red Food Driveis an annual food donation effort, sponsored by the Cornell Public Service Center and Cornell Students for Hunger Relief, that encourages students to use any Big Red Bucks they have left at the end of the year to buy and donate non-perishable food items for Tompkins County residents who are unable to obtain enough food for themselves. Students are also encouraged to donate excess unopened food items from their dorms and apartments before leaving campus for the summer, rather than throwing the food in the garbage.

“We look forward to the Big Red Food Drive every year. It is a wonderful partnership between Cornell and the community,” says Meaghan Sheehan Rosen, FDN’s program coordinator. “Our volunteers drive to Cornell every night during the food drive, and they return to the FDN facility with their vehicles totally full of donations.”

136 boxes of food in the FDN facility.

Cornell Students for Hunger Relief, a student-run organization and a program of Cornell’s Public Service Center, works to learn about the hunger situation in our local community and to educate the Cornell community about the food wastage at Cornell, current local and national hunger issues, and what individuals can do to help.

Friendship Donations Network, which was founded in 1988 by Sara Pines, rescues fresh nutritious food from area stores and farms that would otherwise be thrown away and redistributes it to neighbors in need. FDN’s extensive network of volunteers picks up donations of mostly perishable excess and day-old food and delivers it to pantries and programs that serve more than 2,100 people weekly. FDN diverts over 500,000 lbs. of good food from the landfill each year. More information at: <friendshipdonations.org>.