Southwest Virginia Community College holds Spring Day of Service food packaging event

Danielle Sandler
·2 min read

CEDAR BLUFF, VA (WVNS) — More than 200 volunteers of students, faculty, and staff from Southwest Virginia Community College packaged 37,500 meals and donated them to local food pantries.

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The event, Spring Day of Service, offered a valuable learning experience and an opportunity to help with food insecurity in the community.

Local food pantries serving residents in the college’s four-county service area will be given free meals to give out. The meals will also be delivered to the college’s “Food for Thought” food pantries, which is located on the main campus and at the college’s Bluefield Center and Southern Gap Center.

“I am proud of the volunteer service work our students, faculty, and staff are doing. The Day of Service offers our students a chance to give back and enrich their educational experience while they are students with us here at Southwest. This is more than just a day of volunteering; It is a chance for us to unite for a cause that reaches beyond our campus,” said Dr. Tommy Wright, President of Southwest.

Wright always encouraged the campus community to take place in such events, which led to the first Day of Service in 2019.

Brandon Hensley, the Campus and Community Engagement Coordinator for Southwest shared how this event is beneficial, especially for the community.

“A Day of Service, creating that culture and giving back, and so we had tried different, like, different iterations of the Day of Service, until we kind of arrived at this one because this one, it’s a quick way to give back a whole lot to our communities,” said Hensley.

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The food from this event came from the Outreach Program. Local food pantries picked up the food after the event and will be distributing food to people in need in the college’s four-county service area of Buchanon, Dickenson, Russell, and Tazewell counties.

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