Patricia Bartow, director of the Child Development Center and the Jag Kitchen Food Pantry, has won best Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week Organizer by the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness
“This award reflects the hard work and commitment of a team of individuals who volunteered their time to help create awareness for at-risk students facing hunger and homelessness.” Bartow said. “I am thrilled to be recognized, but would not have been able to accomplish a week of extraordinary events without those who participated.”
Bartow organized Southwestern College’s first Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week by rallying many campus organizations, employees and students to bring awareness and resources to students facing food and housing insecurities. Among the week’s events were a special Jag Kitchen breakfast bar every single day, a clothing and toiletry drive, a financial literacy workshop and a community forum with local Assemblymember Shirley Weber.
Southwestern College’s Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week reinforces a commitment started by Bartow more than a year and a half ago when the Jag Kitchen Food Pantry was created. When it opened, she said that Southwestern College needs to make a commitment to make sure students’ primary needs, like food and housing, are being met if they’re to succeed academically.
“It’s a fundamental right that every human being should have access to food,” Bartow said when the Jag Kitchen was created. “Maybe they’ll get paid in two days and what we give them lets them hang on for those two days.”
