Student Food Rescue — a student-led program from Boston University’s Community Service Center which combats food excess and food insecurity in the Greater Boston area — continued in-person volunteering throughout the pandemic without contributing to the spread of the virus by implementing a variety of COVID-safety protocols.
The Student Food Rescue — or SFR — decided not to pause in-person operations during the pandemic because food insecurity in and around Boston was increasing.
“We just had to figure out the safest way that we could continue our program, because COVID was only exacerbating the issue,” said Saahil Adusumilli, one of SFR’s two Program Managers.
SFR continued daily ‘runs’ — in which small groups of volunteers transport food donations from grocery stores, bakeries, and farmers’ markets to food distribution sites such as homeless shelters and food banks — starting in the fall of 2020 and throughout the pandemic without a single COVID case contract-traced back to their operations.
SFR started their safety precautions with contactless pick-ups and drop-offs, Adusumilli said in an interview.
Having “as little human interaction as possible was one of our bigger goals,” he said.
The program also added supplies including anti-bacterial spray, hand sanitizers, gloves, and surgical masks to each of the vans that volunteers used to transport donations.
These protocols — aimed at helping volunteers avoid contaminating donations or endangering the program’s community partners — were especially important for SFR to implement because many of the neighborhoods that SFR works in have been “disproportionately affected by COVID,” Adusumilli said.
Inside the vans, volunteers were encouraged to open windows — weather permitting — and run the air conditioning to increase airflow in the vehicles.
During the 2020-2021 school year, SFR decreased the number of volunteers for each run and paired volunteers according to which ones were already likely to be among each other’s close contacts. At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, the program returned to having four volunteers for each run.
“The program managers, in my opinion, have done a great job on making it safe for both the volunteers and the community partners,” said Eunice Lamothe, a BU student that has been volunteering for SFR since the summer of 2019.
SFR aims to mitigate both food excess and food insecurity in the Greater Boston-area by collecting fresh, high-quality food products — that might have been otherwise thrown out — and transporting them to already-established, local food distribution centers spanning from Somerville to Dorchester, according to the SFR Volunteer Handbook.
The state of Massachusetts produces over 1 million tons of food waste every year, according to 2015 estimates by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
“Just getting to see how much food is wasted has been a huge learning point for me,” Lamothe said in an interview over the phone.
Over 1 in 5 households with children in Massachusetts are food insecure, as of December 2021, according to Project Bread, a Massachusetts charity that advocates to eliminate hunger from the state.
SFR’s purpose is to be “the bridge that gaps the excess to where there is need,” said Alexia Lancea, SFR’s other Program Manager.
The COVID-19 pandemic made the need for food more significant.
Food insecurity in Massachusetts increased 59 percent — the greatest percentage increase of food insecurity in the country — during the pandemic, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank.
SFR plays an important role in assisting local communities in their efforts to reduce hunger, so halting volunteer operations was not a reasonable option, Lancea said in an interview.
“We can’t just take a break,” she said.
SFR’s mission to play a supporting role to long-time community leaders is what makes the program special, said Lamothe.
“It gives labor, it gives supplies, it gives resources, instead of centering the students as the people who are making the difference,” she said. The Student Food Rescue “is supporting those who are already doing that kind of work.”
But SFR’s service model cannot completely solve local hunger, Lancea said. Government action will be necessary to make a significant dent in Boston’s food insecurity problem.
“We are just a band-aid to help people with immediate needs,” she said. “And only policy changes will change those needs.”
