The Austin City Council approved extended funds to the Central Texas Food Bank on March 27 to increase resources for local university and college food pantries.
The Central Texas Food Bank will receive an increase of up to $157,500 over a one-year period to help provide services and grants to university and college food shelters in Austin and Travis County. This comes after the organization’s College Food Access Grant program in 2022, which provided grants to food pantries in local universities, including UT.
Beth Corbett, vice president of government affairs and advocacy at the Central Texas Food Bank, said although the organization is still in the process of determining how many funds will go to each pantry, they plan to reach out to these food shelters and help finance any resources or improvements they may need.
“Maybe the students who are accessing the pantry want more frozen food options,” Corbett said. “We would then, in response to what that campus requested, help to invest in, as an example, larger freezer space.”
UT Outpost, the free on-campus food pantry open for all students, served over 2,761 students on campus last semester, and it worked with and received grants from the Central Texas Food Bank to help maintain the food supply, said Valeria Martin, assistant director for basic needs and Terry Scholars.
Martin said the outpost will likely use these funds for some equipment needs, but primarily toward increasing the food supply and deliveries they receive.
“Just getting the food items is incredibly helpful for us,” Martin said. “We have really high numbers (of students) that have been coming in terms of visits this year, and so keeping the shelf stocked really does matter. They usually come out on a day that we don’t receive other deliveries, so it helps beefing up the amount of deliveries we get in the week.”
The outpost is not the only pantry on campus that has received funds from the Central Texas Food Bank. La Tiendita, managed by the Department of Latino Studies, has received $16,500 in funding from the food bank. Despite nothing being formalized yet, Laura Delfausse, project coordinator and health educator at Latina Research Institute, said the food pantry discussed implementing refrigerators.
“(The funding) provides a lot of relief because when you’re self-funded, you are constantly trying to get money,” Delfausse said. “Especially since we are 100% volunteer run, staff and students are doing this. It just makes the burden of fundraising, and also even just running it, so much more easy because we now have that partnership.”
Although these new funds have not yet been awarded, Central Texas Food Bank plans to use these funds to continue its mission of sustaining and improving food shelter access for students.
“It was important that we bring the food to where the people are, so we know students are going to be on campus,” Corbett said. “It was really important to provide that access where it would be the most convenient and easiest for those students to access it.”
