Now that COVID-19 restrictions on campus have been eased, many organizations on campus have experienced revivals, including Community Outreach & Opportunity Project (COOP)’s Harvest Volunteering.
Harvest Volunteering is a student-run organization that seeks to reduce food waste by packaging dining-hall food and sending the food to local organizations. This year’s local organizations are the Rescue Mission and Hope House, both located in Utica. The COOP sponsored organization is currently led by three Environmental Studies students: Katie Rockford ’24, Sarah Ahrens ’24 and Anna Yankee ’25.
The program was recently revamped by Rockford during the second half of last semester after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “As a current junior, I entered Hamilton in the midst of the pandemic when The Harvest was on a hiatus, but I had heard about the program from talking to upperclassmen and I knew it was one of the volunteering opportunities I really wanted to be a part of. I ended up getting in contact with Reuben Haag, the Bon Appetit general manager, and expressed my interest in restarting the program,” Rockford stated. After recruiting both Ahrens and Yankee, the program was up and running.
Volunteers first started packing leftover food from McEwen and then moved their way to Commons as the program gained more volunteers. Each shift is 20 minutes long, but many volunteers chose to sign up for multiple shifts. During those first few weeks of the semester, Harvest Volunteering was able to salvage 1,794 pints of food.
Students have the opportunity to volunteer with Harvest Volunteering as an individual or with a team/group. In fact, the volunteer program has drawn students from all communities on campus, including the Women’s Track and Field Team. Leah Basel ’24 commented that “when COOP presented Harvest to the student body last semester, the Women’s Track and Field team was immediately on board and excited at the opportunity to give back to the community. Each week, we had at least eight girls from the team show up to Commons to help package, weigh, and label food from the home station left over from that day. Knowing that the significant volume of food we packaged would have otherwise been wasted made this volunteer experience particularly rewarding. The team and I had such a great time getting to know the student managers and we are looking forward to giving back this semester.”
Rockford remarked that, “as someone with a strong passion for sustainability, volunteering, and education, this program is a perfect opportunity to explore all three passions and give back to the local community.”
If you are interested in learning more about the issue of food waste, Harvest Volunteering recommends visiting ReFED’s website. Anyone interested in volunteering with Harvest Volunteering and COOP should reach out to [email protected].
