For Thirteen Years, Students Have Been Delivering Unserved Dining Meals to Local Food Pantry

"What I really like about Food Forward is that it's a low time commitment but high-impact club," Food Forward leader and main delivery person Dave Berlin ’19 said. 

The pick-up and delivery process takes about twenty minutes. Since the club's founding in 2006, Food Forward has provided more than 24,500 pounds of meals to the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program.

Emma Enoch, the food bank's coordinator, typically greets the students, weighs their donations, and then repackages the dishes for clients.

"When we get the food from Bowdoin, it's nutritionally dense, and it's accessible to clients," she said. That means that "if folks are homeless, they can take it without needing a stove or can opener."

In fact, they'll often eat it right then and there, she said, "and there's always really positive feedback."

She recalled one particular dish that delighted people. "I think you guys gave us lentil curry once, which wasn't super familiar to some clients," she said. But after a few sampled it, they enthusiastically encouraged others to give it a try.

Food Forward was started by Ian Yaffe ’09 when he was a first-year student. "It was easy to implement because of the willingness of everyone at Bowdoin to come together for something that had implications for the common good, obvious reductions for Bowdoin's waste, and an obvious opportunity for students to get involved in the local community," he said.

The club's mission has been maintained continuously over the last thirteen years by students. Daran Poulin, Thorne Hall's production manager, said it makes his team's job easier to have a consistent outlet for certain types of leftovers. "The students are key to making the whole program work," he said, adding that his staff would struggle to find the time to make the deliveries themselves.

The only prepared food the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program can accept from Food Forward are dishes that have not been put out in the dining hall lines and are less than three days old. 

In addition to giving meals to the food pantry, Bowdoin Dining once a month prepares a cooked meal for twenty-five people at the Tedford Shelter in Brunswick, which shelter employees pick up.