University Students Work to Provide Meals to Community Members in Need

University of Scranton student volunteers with the University’s Center for Service and Social Justice (CSSJ) have been hard at work to make sure that Scranton-area community members have the food that they need. This week dozens of University student volunteers worked together with the Friends of the Poor Scranton to create meal baskets for over 150 families. Meal baskets were created with all Covid safety measures in place and include a full holiday dinner with a ham, vegetables, and dessert. This effort was recently highlighted in a WBRE-WYOU Eyewitness News story, as well as coverage by WNEP-TV, Fox 56 News, and the Scranton Times-Tribune.

The Easter basket dinner preparation is one of many programs that CSSJ volunteers are working on to assist residents in the Scranton community. Students also recently participated in the “Servathon” – a full day of service that engages students in projects that meet local community needs. During this event, CSSJ students created more than 275 Easter baskets and 200 hand-made Easter cards.

These efforts build upon the Center for Service and Social Justice’s ongoing work to help Scranton area community members. At the onset of the pandemic, CSSJ launched the “We Care Wednesday” program to help support Friends of the Poor Scranton’s efforts to provide meals to low-income community members. This weekly event provides meals and snacks along with hand-written cheerful notes to let community members know that someone is thinking about them.

This program has served provided over 2,000 meals to area residents and has expanded for the spring semester to include Thursday “We Care” meal distributions. Additional “We Care” programs include the creation of 400 thank you notes to essential workers during the pandemic.

For more information about the Center for Service and Social Justice please visit here and follow CSSJ on Facebook at @UofSCSSJ.