In this episode, Lauren welcomes representatives from the University of Iowa’s Food Pantry and Clothing Closet, two on-campus organizations that assist students, staff, and faculty in meeting their basic needs, and discuss the importance of food and clothing accessibility and affordability for college students to survive and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

More about the Food Pantry at: imu.uiowa.edu/imu-services/food-pantry-iowa

More about the Clothing Closet at: imu.uiowa.edu/imu-services/clothing-closet

Lauren Lavin:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to From the Front Row. This is Lauren Lavin. And this week’s episode is all about the food pantry and the clothing closet at the University of Iowa. Prior to this episode, I knew that the food pantry and clothing closet existed, but I just wasn’t aware of the thoughtfulness with which it was created. And the students just drive to make it the best possible and serve the most students and staff at the University of Iowa as possible. So I hope you really enjoy this episode and this conversation with Faith, Yun, Steph, and then myself. If you’re new here, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they’re relevant to anyone, both in and outside the field of public health.

Hello everybody and welcome to the podcast. I’m super excited to be joined with some students and staff that represent the food pantry and the clothing closet here at the University of Iowa. To start off, could I have each of you introduce yourself, slow introduction about what you do, how you’re connected, anything you want to share about yourselves to get started?

Steph Beecher:

Well, I’ll jump it off. So my name’s Steph Beecher. I’m the basic needs’ coordinator at the U. I’m housed in the Dean of Students office and so I’ve been in this role for a couple of years now. And I came from wellness, was an educator and so it was kind of a natural fit for me. And so I oversee food pantry, clothing closet, [inaudible 00:01:25] and wheelchair and some other basic needs initiatives.

Faith Surface:

Okay, I can go next. I’m Faith Surface and I am in my last semester of undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa. I’m studying ethics and public policy with a focus in economics, a minor in international studies and a certificate in resilience and trauma-informed perspectives. I’m one of the basic needs managers here at the food pantry at Iowa. And we’ve got three of us and we’re a really wonderful team along with a lot of volunteers and lead volunteers. I’m also an intern with a nonprofit in the area called Neighbors of Iowa City. And then in January I’m actually headed off to start my MSW through the University of Michigan.

Lauren Lavin:

You have a lot going on, so thanks for taking time today.

Faith Surface:

Thank you.

Yun Ki:

I guess that leaves me to finish off. My name is Yun Ki. I’m also one of the basic needs managers here at the university. We’re missing Conrad Gerhardt today, just a quick shout out because he does amazing work with us with everybody on our team. And we also have two graduate assistants. One of them is named Azine and Erica. They are very, very wonderful members of our team, but unfortunately they couldn’t be here with us today. I’m a fourth year. I’m majoring in political science and ethics and public policy. I have a couple of minors and certificates, I’m working at the Kings Iowa right now and I’m actually headed to law school next year.

Lauren Lavin:

Great. Well, it sounds like you guys have a really great team and that it kind of takes the army to pull this off. So it’ll be interesting to see and to learn more about this as we keep going. So let’s start off. Can you guys provide some background on the food pantry and clothing closet at Iowa University, kind of how it got started and what the overall mission for it is?

Steph Beecher:

I can take that one. So what’s amazing about this whole operation is it started by students and it’s pretty much ran by students. So I always like to say we are sitting on the shoulders of students. So back in 2016, they get a student org together and saw the issue way before any of us had it on our radar. 2016 student security wasn’t talked about like it is now. And so this group of students got space in the Iowa House Hotel, so a hotel room off the IMU. So you can imagine a hotel room with a fridge and some shelves. They did incredible with the space. They gave out 10,000 pounds that year, which just gives you context. We gave out about 125,000 pounds this past year. So to see 2016 to now, if it worked for them and if it worked for the students now, no idea where it’d be.

So the pandemic hit and so it really shed light on student security. It’s always been there. It just really was brought in to the surface. So most spaces in the IMU, I’m not even trying to describe it, it’s ridiculous to find. It’s not the best space but again, we may do. And then fast-forward, January we moved from student org, so our student orgs kind of have an advisory board now to having paid positions. So the org was getting stipends and it came out to couple bucks an hour, which was ridiculous. So currently we have three students who are paid and like Faith said, two graduate assistants as well. And then in August, middle of August, we opened up our new space and it used to be the Old Hills Bank in the ground floor of the IMU. And it also has attached to it the clothing closet, which that forever was still in a hotel room. So disjointed services. So now we’re starting it and you can start seeing the formation of this basic need kind of hub happening.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Well, also it shows what a need this filled when you go from 10,000 to 125,000 pounds of food. That’s crazy in a relatively short amount of time. That’s seven-ish years.

Steph Beecher:

Yeah, totally. And I just ran data for our new space, so for August and September, and this is excluding this week, so this August, September we gave out almost 20,000 pounds of food. Last August, September we gave out 16,000 pounds of food. So just in that, just with the space alone, it’s allowing us more capacity to take in more food and also the exposure, again with the visits increasing the way that they are, we’re able to feed more people

Lauren Lavin:

Right. And the new accessible space, people are going to be much more likely to just see it in passing and remember that for when it’s needed.

Steph Beecher:

Well, even on orientation tours, when tours come through, the guides always mention the food pantry. It’s awesome. So then we can say almost every student is finding out about the pantry before they even come in on campus.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. And it reduces the stigma around it. I don’t know if we’ll get to that later, but if it’s just in a really accessible place where you just walk by, it becomes kind of a non-issue as far as stigma’s concerned.

Steph Beecher:

I think you’re right on.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay, so next question. What kind of support and resources does the food pantry provide and how has that changed since it began?

Yun Ki:

I think I’ll jump in on that one. It really is like a hodgepodge of things. We have a focus area to write. We want to at least somewhat regularly try to have a wide variety of non-perishable food items, fresh produce and personal care products. But what we consistently have, as in if we have very specific goods each week, it really varies. It’s not really something that we’re able to know every week that like, every week we’re going to have Cheerios, every week we’re going to have this type of apple or whatnot. So it’s really about that sort of community buildup. We just grab what we can when we can and we try to have things somewhat consistently within certain groups. We set the non-perishable food items, the fresh produce and personal care products.

Lauren Lavin:

And for the clothing closet, what services do they have?

Yun Ki:

So the clothing closet is kind of interesting or unique in that it’s not just all clothes. We are trying to expand what resources we provide there, but with the clothing closet, it’s more like gently used business casual or professional attire. And sometimes we’ll have essential items like winter coats, but mainly it’s business and professional attire for students. And anybody with an Iowa one card really that needs the professional attire in order to be able to elevate themselves for internship fairs, for interviews, for job opportunities, or even just to feel good in the space that they’re in with professional attire. I think it’s a really important resource that not only helps the people that need what we have, but it also promotes sustainability because we are able to recycle clothing.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. I think that’s a really good point and something that has become much more important to both students and just people at large, the sustainability of clothing. So that’s I think a really good point to bring up. Who can access these resources and what’s the process for utilizing the resources.

Faith Surface:

Yeah, so I’ll jump in on this question. So anyone like Yun actually just mentioned, anyone with Iowa One card or a [inaudible 00:08:39] ID card or whatever you’d call that, can use the food pantry at Iowa or the clothing closet at Iowa. And that means if you’re a student, faculty, staff member, you are a student, staff, faculty member at the hospital and clinics, et cetera, you are able to use this resource. And what the process for students to utilize these resources kind of looks like, so if you are using the food pantry, you’ll walk up, sometimes there’s a line, sometimes there isn’t. If there’s a long line and you’re towards the back of it, we only allow five people into shop at a time because it helps to limit that scarcity mindset that often plagues people who are food insecure when they have enough room and they feel like they don’t have to compete for resources. So that’s why we try to keep it to a maximum of five people in the food pantry at one time.

So if you’re past that first five, you’ll actually get like a restaurant buzzer. And we’ll give you those buzzers and you can sit anywhere kind of near the pantry in that basement area. You can’t go too far, but then we have the number of your buzzer and your name written down. And so then as people kind of cycle through, we’ll call your buzzer in a beep like a restaurant buzzer. You’ll come up, you’ll sign in. If it’s your first time, you’ll tap your Iowa one card on the little kiosk we have until you hear a beep. You’ll fill out a survey and that’s a survey you’ll fill out once per every semester, so we can keep current up-to-date information on our clients from semester to semester. It’s also super helpful for us to utilize that data when we are going to the university and describing we are seeing an influx of people or here’s where a lot of our clients are from, this is why we’re trying to expand this type of food, or we need more funding because we’re seeing a huge increase in numbers, at least in the fall.

We need more funding for the fall time. We use that data to make sure we are running efficiently and smoothly and actually meeting the needs the people we’re serving. And then you’ll grab a basket. Everyone uses a basket to shop, and what that basket does is it acts like kind of an equalizer. So you will fill up this basket or you might not fill it up. Even if you’re getting two items you’re going to use the basket. And then if your items are overflowing from the basket, even if you’ve followed all the limit signs, you will be asked to put a few items back. That’s kind of like a, hey, the basket is your ultimate limit to make sure people can all get enough food for their families and such. And as you shop, you’ll follow these arrows that are on the ground to kind of guide you through the pantry on the ideal pathway, that’s most efficient.

And also as you’re shopping where I talked about those limits, so there’s limits on every fridge, shelf, freezer. And those limits are essentially our way of rationing the resources we have on a weekly basis. For families who are coming into shop because we do have limited resources, even if we are getting more funding or more donations, there is still the fact of we have to put some measures in place to make sure everybody gets some and not only a few you get all. So sometimes it might be frustrating for clients if they’re like, “Why do I only get one apple when I would really love to have five apples for the week when?” It’s like, “Hey, either you get one apple and everyone else gets one apple or half of our people get five apples and then the rest don’t get any.” So you’ll check out at the end once you’ve gone all the way through. And that just looks like you weighing your basket, letting the person’s checking you out know how many people are in your household or how many you’re feeding,] and then you bag up your items.

Actually recently we started shifting to reusable bags instead of purchasing paper bags and plastic bags for people to use. And then if you want to use the clothing closet, you’ll similarly go to the kiosks so that you fill in, sign in stuff and you’ll go shop. But you have to check out in the food pantry first if you are going to go on the clothing closet or vice versa. If you’re going to go on the clothing closet, you have to check out there first before using the food pantry at Iowa. And for both spaces or just for the food pantry, you can come once per week. And then for the clothing closet you can come as many times per semester, but you’re limited to a total of five items per semester.

I know it was a lot of information, but that’s the rundown we give everyone when they come in for their first time. And then, I don’t know, Yun and Steph, do you guys have anything to add to that?

Steph Beecher:

I would just say the cool part about this is we have so many volunteers and they are the face of… They just created such a welcoming space. So the directions Faith just gave do such a great job of explaining and creating such a positive environment.

Lauren Lavin:

You guys sound like you’ve created such a thoughtful system that makes sure that everyone feels welcome and that scarcity, only having five people in the store at a time. Just what a thoughtful way to construct this so that it works the best way that it possibly can for both students and from a practical perspective. And I know you already talked about the poundage of food, but can you share some statistics or anecdotes about the impact of the food pantry and clothing closet on students and staff? I guess since it’s open to really anyone at the University of Iowa?

Steph Beecher:

Yeah, we keep robust data because again, like Yun and Faith are saying, it helps us advocate for what we need from the university. And again, what we’re seeing from 2022 to ’23, we saw 85% increase in clients. So that’s in the old space. So what we’re imagining for began in September, we’re still waiting for September numbers to roll in. But right now we saw almost 1800 people and then last year we saw 1300 people. So we are definitely seeing an increase. What’s really cool about our new space, and this just shows that we’re getting more exposure, 24% of our clients are new. When we look at last year, 12.5% of clients were new. So more and more people are getting exposed to the pantry. And then the other stand I want to share is when we look at food insecurity between undergrads and graduate students, according to our National College Health assessment data that wellness does, undergrads are more food insecure than graduate students but yet graduate students use the pantry.

They make up about 60% of our clients. And we talk about this all the time amongst us of it could be due stigma. Again, just grad students tend to be a little bit more savvy of navigating resources. And so what’s really neat are new data faculty staff 19%, undergraduates 20%, and that’s compared to 9% last year. So we’re seeing a big uptick, which we all kind of suspected. And then the last thing I’ll share is the average pounds per person. So how many pounds does someone take on a visit? And so with our limits and with our increase in clients, it’s only about 13 pounds, which isn’t a lot. If you compare it to years prior, it is around 23 pounds. So one of our goals again going forward is how do we create sustainable funding sources? Because right now student government provides about $60,000 for us every year for the next five years, and then we get about $10,000 from faculty staff and then about $10,000 from graduate college.

So with the attention that food pantry is getting, we’re getting more donors and interested in donating, working with the Center for Advancement and creating best practices around how do we solicit donations because what we know is people want to give, we just have to give them inroads to give.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, exactly. I can’t decide if I’m surprised or not that grad students make up the biggest portion of that. I think there’s a lot of rhetoric in grad students circles as one that, oh, we were a poor grad student. And so I think there’s maybe less stigma around utilizing some of those resources because we kind of all talk about it. But I find it interesting that that same conversation doesn’t necessarily exist around undergraduates. But it’s promising to see that they continue to use it and hopefully that number goes up, especially if they aren’t-

Steph Beecher:

And grad students are used to navigating a college campus, and I think with our new students that just can be overwhelming. They’re getting bombarded with resources. And so, one thing has been instrumental in doing is getting a basic needs statement on syllabi. So I’ll let Yun, and if want I’ll mention that.

Yun Ki:

Oh, so it’s just a really important and I think vital resource on campus to just understand even on syllabi where you can get your support. I think Steph does a really great job of reaching out to the students. I know that sometimes she’s just like, oh, I have to… Steph does more than just work with us. She works with students across all parts of campus and really helps people feel supported on campus. So I think that having readily available resources where people know who they can contact, where they should go is really, really important and vital. And one of the things we’re doing right now is we’re working with USG. And they’re messaging the different DEO officers of the different colleges around campus and making sure that we can get those resources as broadly known as possible.

Lauren Lavin:

I love that. I’m a teaching assistant. That’s great to know that that should be included or that there’s action being taken in that direction. You get money to purchase food, where do you get your food from and are there ways for donations to happen from just the public?

Yun Ki:

Yeah, absolutely. So we get our food from a wide variety of sources, but mainly we get our food from HACAP, Table to Table and third Table to Table we also get Grow Johnson County. The HACAP is a state resource and food reservoir that collects different food from around the entire state of Iowa and sometimes even from outside of Iowa. And then they distribute it then to direct B two C pantries like us. So they’re kind of a B to C provider and they also work with other B to B organizations to collect food. Table to Table is another one of those B to B and B to C organizations that gets us a lot of… How do I say? The almost food waste from around town. So they’ll go to different grocery stores or food sources around town like some of the gas stations or grocery stores, and they’ll get food that is maybe a little bit damaged or unable to be sold at that point but it’s still perfectly healthy and good.

So it’s one of those sustainable resources around town. And they also provide us with deliveries from Grow Johnson County, which is one of the coolest things that Johnson County does. And it’s this acreage, I think it’s like five acres or something like that where they grow a lot of fresh produce. And the most important thing is that they grow produce that is multicultural and vibrant just like our community. And so they provide us with collard greens, okra, bok choy, jalapenos, tomatillos, all sorts of wonderful produce throughout the season that definitely helps support the students. So we get a lot of money from USG and from our donors. Specifically this semester for our grand opening, we got donations from some departments like UI, political science or from local community partners like Pioneer Food coop. And they have really, really been instrumental in providing the resources that we need.

Lauren Lavin:

I had never heard of the Grow… Was it Grow Johnson County?

Yun Ki:

Oh yeah. It’s so awesome.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s really cool. I’ll have to look more into that Then how does the university community staff, students contribute to the success of this resource or how can we going forward?

Faith Surface:

I think that the Iowa community has actually done a really great job of showing up for the food pantry and the clothing closet thus far, which is really something that makes me proud to be a Hawkeye. I know that sounds cliche but that is one thing where I’m like, Iowans show up, which is super nice. So say like the community and in general, I feel like if you’re talking about the Iowa City community, they do a really great job of showing up with donations. We get plenty of emails about, “Hey, I have some suits I can donate. I have some apples from my backyard we just got in this morning, you’ll receive that.” And we have got a lot of different churches and other places that just still have extra goods and they’re like, wait a minute. I’ve heard about this. Because a lot of community resources or community members actually in this area tend to be pretty plugged into the university in general. And so they are focused on how can we gi back to the university, which is nice.

Faculty and staff, they either are donating their professional clothing or they’re also volunteering their time. But I think the biggest way we see faculty and staff helping out and giving back is them posting donation drives or stuff like that, or fundraising events, which is super, super helpful and very wonderful. And I feel like a lot of the donation food we bring in is actually from them, most of it if not all of it. And then students, the ways they help out are they volunteer. We are not completely but almost completely volunteer run and we literally could not do the day-to-day without volunteers. I remember there is a beginning part of this semester where we were really short-staffed in volunteers just because with moving to a new space, we hadn’t been able to put as much effort into volunteer recruitment and it was so not fun.

It was so overwhelming. I think we could all attest to how hard it was, and it really reminded us… We had already known this, that it really reiterated that whole point of we rely so heavily on our volunteers. And moving forward if people want to help us if they don’t already help us, we are always looking for monetary donations, which a way to do that is linked on our website. You can actually also set up reoccurring donations where it’s just automatically taken out of your bank account every so often. Super mindless, super easy. You can also host a donation drive in your department or at your place of work or wherever you’re at. You can host some sort of donation drive in whatever groups you’re involved in.

You can also offer to put on an event at the university where we maybe come in to help with one of our special projects, where you email us and say, “Hey, we’d love to pick a day where we help with the project you guys haven’t had the manpower to work on.” You can also… Like fraternities and sororities they actually will sometimes pick a shift to commit to that is committed to each week for the whole semester. And they’ll staff it with different fraternity and sorority members throughout the semester so that way they’ve got a shift coverage. You can sponsor a shift. You can also volunteer yourself. You can just sign up and say like, “Hey, I’m going to volunteer and commit.” And I think that’s most of the ways. I might be missing a few things just because…

Lauren Lavin:

Amazon wishlist.

Faith Surface:

Oh yes. Most importantly, that’s what I was forgetting. We have an Amazon wishlist set up, so if you’re ever not sure what to donate or you’re not sure how to get it here, or you’re hosting a donation drive and you’re really not sure what to be asking for, we have an Amazon wishlist that is continually updated by our staff members, specifically Yun has been really drawing that out lately. And that will be up-to-date with our highest priority to our lowest priority, the quantities of different items we need. And that’s a good marker. So if you’re ever wanting to donate, you can just buy something off that list. It’ll get shipped directly to us, and you have had to do no work other than clicks and buttons. Or you can if you’re hosting a donation drive, post that QR code or post a link or use that as a way of communicating what we need to the people in your drive.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow. Those are some really great tangible ways to connect with this. And even something as easy as the Amazon wishlist that is super easy because it literally strips directly to you and has a really good tangible impact on our community. Rising tide lifts all boats. So with that, I think you might have touched on any local organizations and businesses, but do you guys want to add any of those that collaborate with you at the food pantry or clothing closet?

Steph Beecher:

Graduates gave us a bunch of sheets and a lot of their hygiene products, but that’s something like our priority going forward is working with the Center for Advancements. I actually just met with them this morning and working with them to tap into corporate donors, local businesses. So they can really help us elevate that now that we’re looking at the progression of the pantry, now that we got logistics down. We got this well-oiled machine that again, the students work their butt off to establish. Now we can start thinking about those bigger picture items.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. So if you’re a local organization listening to this and you want to collaborate with them, I’m sure there’ll be more than open to that. Faith, what did we just say? It’s about $250,000 if you want the pantry named after you or was that the print?

Faith Surface:

Yeah. Any big names donors.

Lauren Lavin:

No, we got to raise the stakes.

Faith Surface:

According to half a million dollars we need, and the pantry can forever be named after you, a loved one. You can memorialize whoever you want with our food pantry.

Lauren Lavin:

It’s for the low price of a half a million.

Faith Surface:

Exactly. Just email us at studorg-foodpantry@uiowa.edu today.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay, last question. How, if any, students or community members want to get involved, how can they connect with your team and the food pantry and clothing closet?

Yun Ki:

I think that we all have probably a piece to say about this, but one of the easiest ways to get involved, and we have very good social media presence I think with this and very good community outreach with this, is just to literally just reach out. Email us, Instagram, DM us, Facebook message us, message us on LinkedIn, and we can get you started on any kind of way. We have wonderful guides and resources to let you guys know how you can support us. We have big donation lists and guides that kind of help us through that as well. So we have a lot of different ways that you can get involved. A lot of them Faith has already brought up. And all you have to do is reach out and ask and we’ll give you tons of ideas.

Lauren Lavin:

Great. What would be the Instagram handle or the email address or is there a website?

Faith Surface:

We do have a website, so if you just Google food pantry at Iowa it’ll bring it up, the email, Instagram, et cetera should be on there. I think we’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The Instagram handle is @basicneedsatIowa. Let me triple check that right now. If you search food pantry at Iowa on Facebook, it’ll come up, same thing for LinkedIn. But yeah, I just confirmed the handle for the Instagram is @basicneedsatIowa, but those are the social medias.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay.

Yun Ki:

Yeah, really quickly, something that we really want to focus on as well with our donations are multicultural goods because we are an international and vibrant community here on campus, and we want ourselves to reflect that to the best of our ability. And when you look at the data, we are disproportionately represented by our community members of color and international students, especially within the graduate student community. And so when we think about equity in education and the marginalized communities that need help or need an extra hand in this circumstance, just statistically speaking with what we’ve got, we want to make sure that we are representing and providing resources to the best of our abilities on our team and on the shelves.

Lauren Lavin:

Perfect. Thank you all three of you so much for taking this time to help us all learn about the food pantry and clothing closet. You guys are great to have on the podcast, so eloquent and providing us with so much great information.

Steph Beecher:

Thank you for having us and everyone listening, anything helps. And also don’t think you have to be special to make a difference. It really is just the mundane, normal people being like, “Hey, I have some cans I’m never going to use.” I have this thing that’s going to expire in a month and I bought it on a whim and now I’m not going to eat it.” Just like it’s donating, it’s the little things. You don’t have to be special. It’s just acting and not thinking too hard about it. But we appreciate any little help and we do appreciate you having us on.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, thank you so much.

Steph Beecher:

No drop in the bucket is too small.

Lauren Lavin:

I love that. And that concludes this week’s episode. Big thank you to Steph, Faith and Yun for joining me today. This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health. If you have a suggestion for our team, you can reach us at CPH-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.