Western Washington University

AS Food and Housing Insecurity Advisory Committee

November 22nd, 2019	VU 460

Board Members:	Present: Trever Mullins (VP for Sustainability), Anthony Phung (Residence Life Representative), J Chaves Lande (Residence Life Representative), Ethan Chrisope (Off-Campus Living Representative), Amber C (Feeding Western Coordinator), Alberto Rodriguez-Escobedo (SAIRC Coordinator), Christian Urcia (Supervising Resident Director), Lorrie Bortuzzo (Multicultural Services), and Karen Deysher (SAIRC Coordinator).
Secretary:	Sierra Templeton
Guest(s):	Johnny Mao

The amount of voting members present did not meet quorum, therefore there was no official meeting held, but instead a collaborative work session. This session began at 2:10 p.m.

II.	Introductions
A.	Welcoming Karen Our new SAIRC representative is Karen Deysher!

II.	Discussion Items
A.	Current Projects Updates Amber: Stuff the shuttle occurred Monday which was a collaboration with Kenzie from the AS ATF in which all proceeds go to the Western Food Pantry. Amber is looking for volunteers for the food pantry network. The food recovery project is working with amber to create a pipeline so that extra food leftover from the donations to the Lighthouse Mission will be able to be placed in the on-campus food pantries. Lorrie: SB 8500 funding came through so she will be moving forward with the work-plan to centralize a food and housing insecurity campaign on campus. There will be a graphic designer hired to create a web page for this. Sara Wilson worked on this proposal with Lorrie but they need to talk to Melynda concerning this. Trever: Melynda mentioned creating a basic needs campaign in January which would invite people across campus who have been working on food and housing insecurity. Currently this is in the works. J: The food pantry is ordering reusable bags but there was an issue with the graphic so it has been delayed, but will be making the switch soon. Johnny: Johnny stated that there needs to be more advertising, posters, and communication with more people. Some of the subs for the desk attendants for example were unaware about the food pantry. Currently students who use the food pantry are more discreet about asking to access food so Johnny is brain storming ways to remedy this. There’s a gap of residents living in Birnham Wood who are unaware of resources concerning food, even just grocery stores. Amber asked about creating an online form for access to the food pantry so students could just order online, even if this would just be a google survey or something of the like. Karen: On the campus syllabi, there are a lot of resources listed at the end and it would be good to add the food pantry to this list. Perhaps even talking to the heads of departments about adding a section about it on the syllabus. SAIRC may also be interested in this kind of thing, as well as making sure there’s outreach to first-year and transfer students. J noted that it would be advantageous to craft a basic needs statement that would go over all this information and more. Trever responded that this would need to be approved by Donna Gibbs. Karen stated that her main goals would be to create the website that is a cohesive guide to food and housing insecurity resources for Western, to find stakeholders that are interested in this, and then define a purpose of the site that will guide the creation. It should be branded in a way that normalizes food and housing insecurity so that students aren’t afraid to access resources. Amber mentioned the need to find a place on the website that would be easily accessible. Lorrie responded that UCDavis has a good example of what a resource page should look like. Karen noted that there is a centralized network between all the colleges in California that displays all these resources on one cohesive site. Is there something we can do that may be equivalent? Amber mentioned that there will an event in January and February called Hoops for Hunger where student and staff can donate food or meal swipes in order to get free admission into basketball games. Johnny mentioned putting up posters that show how students are able to request free swipes through the Swipe Out Hunger program. Christian responded that there’s a waiting list for students currently to receive swipes and so unless there are more swipes donated, there can’t be swipes given to more students. Christian is planning on meeting with Amber in the following weeks about rebranding the campaign to make it more successful so students donate more. Trever reviewed the Teams website, showed how it work and what the HIA teams site specifically looked like.

The collaborative session was let out at 2:53 p.m.