May 6, 2022 | NEWS | By Isaac Yee
“What do I do with my leftover meal plan money?” is a question many students are left with as the school year comes to a close. Students usually raid Local Goods, also known as the C-Store, to buy candies, ice cream, Cliff Bars, and other snacks to ensure that none of their money goes to waste. However, this year a group of students is calling on their peers to use their leftover meal plan money to help buy supplies for the local houseless community and the CC food pantry.
Alanna Jackson ’23, the Vice-President of Outreach for CCSGA, and Chris Heckenkamp ’24 sat down with The Catalyst to outline how students with leftover meal plans can purchase food supplies from Local Goods and donate them to the local houseless shelters and the food pantry.
Students looking to donate leftover meal plan money should first budget how much money they need for the next couple of weeks and subtract that from their total Gold Card balance, Heckenkamp said. They can then visit the C-Store by May 10th and place a bulk order for essential food items such as pasta, ramen, instant oats, and hygiene products, including soap and shampoo.
“Food is amazing, and there are beautiful humans who live within a mile of us that depend on the Colorado Springs community for food,” said Heckenkamp, one of the students behind the initiative. “Many of them are homeless, many of them are vets,” he added.
Heckenkamp said his passion for helping the homeless stems from his own experiences with food pantries growing up. “I know my family used the food pantry during some difficult times and it was comforting that no matter how tough things got, we always had food,” he said.
“I would definitely do it,” Sophie Dellinger, ’24 said when asked whether she would consider donating to the effort. She added that she had previously wanted to do something similar last semester but found it difficult to do with no organized structure.
Rich, a supervisor at Local Goods, told The Catalyst that “everything in the store is available as a bulk order.”
“We ask that you grab one item off the shelf and bring it up to the front, and we can tell you how many are in the case and what the case price is,” Rich added. Local Goods will be accepting bulk orders between 1:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Monday through Friday until May 10.
According to the Local Goods supervisor, students will then receive an email confirmation upon the delivery of their order. However, he added that students must pick up their orders the same day they receive the email.
Students can then drop their items off at the CCSGA office in Worner 011. The office will then coordinate the distribution of the donations between the Colorado Springs Rescue Mission and the CC Food Pantry, Jackson told The Catalyst.
“We humans need food, and at CC, we often have more food than we can eat. I promise you, your thirty minutes of effort can fill the bellies of beautiful human beings, and this is a blessing for us all,” Heckenkamp said.
Students looking for further information can contact Chris Heckenkamp at c_heckenkamp@coloradocollege.edu or Alanna Jackson at a_jackson@coloradocollege.edu for more details.