Student receives help battling childhood hunger

A SUNY Poly student is working to help battle childhood hunger, and a grant through Sodexo and Youth Service America (YSA) is going to help him in the good fight.

Anirudh Bharadwaj, a student at SUNY Poly’s Utica campus is one of 125 young leaders across the country who were awarded $400 grants to organize projects to help end childhood hunger. Grantees educate and mobilize their peers around the issue, creating solutions to end childhood hunger through awareness, service, advocacy, and philanthropy activities.

The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation Youth Grant was awarded to Bharadwaj during the Spring semester.

Bharadwaj’s activity took place in April as part of Global Youth Service Day, the largest volunteering and service event in the world. His plan was setting up a food pantry for low income families which also serves the dual purpose of educating families with low income on how to eat healthier, include more nutrition in day to day meals, and how to avoid unhealthy eating habits.

“Ending child hunger, or at least taking some initiative to end child hunger, is important to me as I believe it is unacceptable for children to go on without eating or even eating unhealthy meals,” Bharadwaj said. “I believe it is important for them to not only eat 3 meals a day but also for those 3 meals to be healthy meals.”

He joined millions of other young people around the world as part of Global Youth Service Day, now in its 29th year. Global Youth Service Day provides an opportunity for young people to find their voice, take action, and make a positive impact in their communities. As the largest service event in the world, Global Youth Service Day is celebrated in more than 135 countries and all 50 states.

Under Bharadwaj’s leadership as a SUNY Poly Dining Sustainability Intern, he and students also established a chapter of Food Recovery Network during the Spring 2017 semester. Students who volunteer for the initiative collected leftover food from the Campus Center dining hall, weighing it, and packaging it. It then gets picked up as donations by Mother Marianne’s Westside Kitchen, a local soup kitchen that offers hot meals to the community.

Food Recovery Network is the largest student led organization that helps colleges reduce waste and feed the hungry at the same time. The program was founded in 2011 at University of Maryland and currently has more than 200 chapters across the country.