Grand Valley State University is hoping to help keep people fed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as school officials announced Thursday it will be donating over 4000 pounds of food to food pantries. The food comes from Grand Valley State University’s Campus Dining, and with the school shut down for the remainder of the semester, officials say it otherwise would have gone to waste.
Tuesday University officials made the announcement that after an initial “4,000 pounds of food was donated to Feeding America West Michigan, another 1,000 had been donated to mobile food pantries for area service workers who have been laid off as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grand Valley State’s Campus Dining Director Paul Kramer.
“It is a big deal to us because it gives back to the community,” Kramer said. “And it is not just the Grand Valley community, we all live in this greater West Michigan area,” he said. “So it is a ‘feel good’ to make sure we are giving back in a bigger way; that it has a greater impact on folks then just the ones on campus.”
The idea, he says came when he recently read about food pantries for service workers who have been laid off due to restaurant shut downs. He reached out to a connection in the service industry to donate the additional food.
