UConn students to launch program to reduce food insecurity

Sep. 6—STORRS MANSFIELD — The Undergraduate Student Government at the University of Connecticut will be accepting applications for their annual Husky Market program from September 6- 16.

Husky Market is a student- led, student- funded initiative led by the UConn Undergraduate Student Government to fight food insecurity.

"No student should ever have to go to bed hungry and we are so excited to bring the program back for another year," Peter Spinelli, vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government, said in a press release.

This year's program will provide food insecure students with $ 300 grocery store gift cards. Unlike in previous years, this year's program is being organized solely by the Undergraduate Student Government.

The application is open to all undergraduate students studying on the Storrs campus. A link to the application will be posted to the Undergraduate Student Government website ( usg. uconn.edu) at 12 p.m. on Tuesday.

Once students are approved for a grocery store gift card, the Undergraduate Student Government will notify them via email of a time to pick up their card. Cards will be available for pick up in the Undergraduate Student Government room in the Student Union building on the Storrs campus.

The Husky Market program began following a 2020 report about food insecurity developed by the university.

The food insecurity report found that the university's Waterbury and Stamford campuses experience relatively low food security. The report found that the Hartford and Avery Point campuses had marginal food security while the Storrs campus had the most food security relative to other UConn campuses.

Overall, the report gave UConn a food security score of 2.18, which suggests marginal food insecurity.

The report found Black men and women, as well as Latino men, experienced more food insecurity on UConn's campuses.

The results of the report were obtained from a survey the university launched to all undergraduate campuses to determine the rate of food insecurity.

In early 2020, Husky Market started with several thousand dollars worth of food that was ordered from Amazon and Peapod.

Students were free to take any food they wanted and they came out in droves.

" We gave out all of the food within 25 minutes," said former UConn student Ethan Werstler, who served as vice president of the student body and one of the spearheaders of Husky Market. " Three hundred people showed up. So I said ' wow this is something that we need to be thinking about here.'" A few weeks later, the Undergraduate Student Government and UConn Praxis were in the process of ordering more food when the COVID- 19 pandemic forced UConn's campuses to close.

This gave birth to the Husky Market that we

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