Giving on Parkside Day: Contribute a Meal with the Sharing Shelves

Have you ever had a long day of classes and just want to get home and eat your comfort meal in peace while you watch your favorite TV show? (In my case, Love is Blind had me hooked!) But what if you didn’t know if you could afford food that day? What if it was also the day that your rent was due, your electricity and heat was due a few days before, and you also just had a car emergency and needed to spend more than you were expecting to fix your car so you could get to class and work? What if you knew you had to be on campus all day and you would be going home hungry because you couldn’t afford food on campus. Now that TV show you wanted to enjoy isn’t so fun anymore, since you were stressed out about a million things, including what you were going to eat for dinner because you couldn't afford anything besides mac and cheese or ramen at the moment.  

At UW-Parkside, the Sharing Shelves is striving to solve food insecurity for many students on campus. When everything is crushing down on you, and you may not be able to afford a good meal, the Sharing Shelves is an excellent choice to visit. Sharing Shelves is a food insecurity resource created at UW-Parkside to help students, faculty, and staff during challenging times when there are limited resources for food. The Sharing Shelves is located in Wyllie Lower Main Place near zone 4 and in Tallent Hall.   

I’m thankful that UW-Parkside has opportunities like this to be able to support students and staff alike in stressful situations. In fact, I’ve been in this situation myself when I was a senior in college. I didn’t know if I could afford a meal each day, so I went to only eating two meals a day. On my campus, we had an option like the Sharing Shelves, but I was too afraid to go. I didn’t want others judging me. Because of that, I missed out on an opportunity to better my quality of life. After graduating, I went into AmeriCorps and didn’t have enough money to afford both rent and food. While I am grateful for my AmeriCorps experience, I needed food stamps to be able to afford to eat and pay rent. In one of the most stressful times of my life, I wish I would have gone to an option like the Sharing Shelves to make my life just a little bit easier during that time.  

To continue to help students, faculty and staff alike have a resource to go to, we need your help in supporting the Sharing Shelves. Parkside Day is a day of giving, giving back, and Ranger Pride. You can be a partner of the Sharing Shelves by donating on Parkside Day!  

The Sharing Shelves is looking for any nonperishable food items for students, faculty and staff to be able to grab a bite to eat on campus during a long day of classes.  

Best food items to donate: 

• Fruit cups 
• Juice Box (100% juice) 
• Granola bars, breakfast bars, trail mix, nuts, popcorn, anything like this. 
• Easy meals 
• Ramen noodle, cup of noodles, etc. 
• Rice Roni, Past Roni, Knorr Rice Sides, Instant Potatoes 
• Easy Made Mac and Cheese Cup NOT the box of mac and cheese. Individual packaged only. 
• Soup (NOT cream of chicken) 

From Costco: 

• Tasty Bite Indian Madras Lentil 
• Shin Noodle Soup  
• Udon Noodle Soup 
• Shin Ramyun 
• Vietnamese Pho 
• Seed of Change Organic Quinoa and Brown Rice 

You can donate by: 

Attending the Parkside Day Sharing Shelves Drive Up Drop Off event from 3PM - 6PM at the Student Center on April 10th  

Drop your donation off at the boxes located around campus:  

• Library Front Desk 
• MOLN 360 
• GRNQ 344 
• RITA 235 
• SAC (in the copy room on the 2nd floor)  
• Tallent Hall entrance (blue bin) 

Can’t attend the event or drop off donations? You can also contribute monetary donations to help support the future of Sharing Shelves by clicking here! 

Want to learn more about Sharing Shelves? Click here for more information.