Sarah Geller and Alex De Luise lead the FRN Chapter at the University of Vermont (UVM), formerly an affiliate of the Campus Kitchens Project. Like many other FRN Chapters, the pandemic created unfavorable circumstances that impacted their food recovery efforts, but by taking things one step at a time, the UVM Chapter managed to safely resume campus food recoveries and increase their volunteer capacity in the process!

What goes into starting a chapter where you live?

Successful campus food recoveries depend heavily on coordination with dining services, volunteer capacity, and transportation capabilities. When the fall semester began, the UVM Chapter started by contacting Marissa Watson, Sodexo’s Sustainability Manager at UVM, who helped them get set up to recover surplus food from different food service locations on campus. Next, the chapter focused on volunteer capacity and access to transportation. 

Pre-pandemic, the UVM Chapter relied on their Leadership Team members with vehicles to transport food donations to their partner agency. However, many of the chapter’s volunteers, including Alex, transitioned to remote learning for the fall semester which made it difficult for the chapter to coordinate food recoveries. To get more people involved, Sarah and Alex contacted Jerome Budomo, Director of Student Life in UVM’s Office of Civic Engagement, who helped them secure access to school vans to support their work.

New transportation capacity allowed more students without personal vehicles to participate in food recovery efforts. In the past, the UVM Chapter could only organize one food recovery per week with two volunteers, one of which had a personal vehicle. In contrast, access to the school van allowed the Chapter to organize two food recoveries per week with teams of five volunteers. 

In an interview with FRN, Sarah commented, “The semester was certainly a challenge. We went in not knowing what the outcome would be. We tried to plan as much as possible but with COVID-19 there’s not much planning you can do.” Despite the challenges, they didn’t give up. Check out our full interview with Sarah and Alex to learn more about their collaborative approach to campus food recovery. 

We asked Sarah, “What is your favorite part of being a chapter member?”

Sarrah replied, “Getting to meet and interact with so many different people from all different backgrounds... People from all over campus from all the different colleges at UVM are involved in the Food Recovery Network because food is universal; food is something that connects everyone. I love that I’ve been able to meet so many different people, including community members.

What goes into starting a chapter where you live?