Capital Area Food Bank

George Mason is fighting food insecurity, one Empty Bowl at a time

Sarah Holland — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 16:37:51 +0000

George Mason is fighting food insecurity, one Empty Bowl at a time Sarah Holland Mon, 04/07/2025 - 12:37

If you’re taking a bowl home from a party, most people leave with leftovers in hand. But at ��’s annual Empty Bowls event, the guests leave with just that: a handmade, and very empty, ceramic bowl.

Bowl selection at the inaugural Mason empty Bowls in 2024. Photo provided

Empty Bowls is a global grassroots movement to support food-related charities and educate people on issues of poverty and hunger in their local communities. At Empty Bowls events, guests give a donation in exchange for a handmade ceramic bowl and a simple soup meal, leaving the event with an empty bowl as a reminder of how many people go without food in the local community.

The idea of Empty Bowls at George Mason started in the least surprising of places: a pottery studio.

Maggie Daniels, professor of tourism and events management in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), and Lauren Long, executive director of Student Involvement, share a love for pottery. Both of them are long-time potters at Manassas Clay. Together, Daniels and Long decided to bring Empty Bowls to George Mason, in support of the Food and Housing Insecurity Fund through the Student Support and Advocacy Center (SSAC).

In order for students to succeed, their basic needs must be met, including stable housing, physical safety, and access to food. The SSAC was started to help connect students with resources as they face life challenges, including ensuring their basic needs are fulfilled. The Food and Housing Insecurity Fund, a donor-generated fund, supports this work.

“About one-third of all college students have experienced some type of food insecurity in the past year,” explained Margaret Olszewska, director of the SSAC. “Food insecurity covers a wide spectrum of situations in which a person lacks consistent access to nutritionally adequate and safe food. It ranges from not eating healthy food due to lack of resources, to missing entire meals.”

The fund supports students at all levels of food insecurity through various programs and resources. In 2024 in collaboration with Sodexo, SSAC distributed 2,400 meal swipes for George Mason on-campus dining halls and had 818 unique users of the Patriot Pantry. Starting in fall semester, a new partnership with Capital Area Food Bank offered students a digital purchasing card so they could buy perishable foods at their local grocery stores. The fund also contributes to helping students find temporary housing on campus in the event of a sudden loss of shelter or safe living situation.

Long and Daniels were determined to make a no-cost event so 100% of the proceeds from ticket sales and the silent auction could go to the fund. Hosted in the Center for the Arts, guests enjoy a soup meal and dessert, music by Green and Gold Soul, and a silent auction with items from local vendors. Everything is donated, so every cent can go directly to the fund.

"The Center for the Arts and Student Involvement are great partners throughout the year, and this is one of our favorite collaborations,” said Julie Thompson, executive director for the Center for the Arts.

Mason Dining contractor Sodexo, the caterer for the event, created a soup menu to reflect warmth, comfort, and inclusivity with locally sourced ingredients and a range of options for different dietary concerns. “Empty Bowls aligns perfectly with Sodexo’s mission to fight food insecurity and support sustainable food initiatives,” said Jenita Thurston, district manager for Sodexo.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the evening is the bowl selection. Each guest gets to take home a handmade ceramic bowl, crafted and donated by potters at Manassas Clay and other studios around Northern Virginia. From small teacups to large serving dishes in a rainbow of different glazes and finishes, there’s a bowl for everyone, and all of them are microwave, dishwasher, and oven safe.

“What’s really special about Empty Bowls is that this grassroots event was born out of the care and concern of our own George Mason community members,” said Olszewska. “It’s one of many examples of how our faculty and staff care about the students we serve beyond just our jobs.”

“For a CEHD faculty member and a University Life director to come together, to be innovative and creative in order to meet the needs of our students, is really at the core of what makes George Mason such an incredible place,” said Long.

Daniels agreed. “It showcases the best of who we are at George Mason.”

Get tickets to the 2025 George Mason Empty Bowls event.

Mason Empty Bowls 2025

Learn more about the Student Support and Advocacy Center

Topics

�� News

College of Education and Human Development

University Life

Mason Empty Bowls

Center for the Arts

Student Support and Advocacy Center (SSAC)

Patriot Pantry

Capital Area Food Bank

Sodexo

Patriot Pantry partners with Capital Area Food Bank for food delivery

Colleen Rich — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:28:06 +0000

Patriot Pantry partners with Capital Area Food Bank for food delivery Colleen Rich Thu, 11/30/2023 - 14:28

��’s Patriot Pantry, in cooperation with the Capital Area Food Bank, is delivering groceries to food-insecure Mason students and their families.

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

“We started from a place of understanding that students have a lot of demands being put on their time and on their resources and began with the simple premise that addressing food needs would increase their success rates,” said Sabrina Tadele, director of strategic initiatives at the food bank, a hunger relief organization that works with community partners throughout the Washington, D.C., region.

The food bank delivers shelf-stable groceries and fresh produce to Mason, which, in cooperation with DoorDash, are then delivered to students’ homes within a 15-mile radius of the Fairfax ��.

“[DoorDash] has been very, very generous with nonprofits, including the whole national network of food banks,” said Tadele.

The Patriot Pantry was the focus of Mason Vision Day 2023, a day of focused philanthropy for the Mason community. Funds raised on Mason Vision Day helped to secure student meal vouchers for on-campus dining, provide gift cards for local grocery stores, and to supply the Patriot Pantry, which is operated by the Student Support and Advocacy Center within University Life.

As part of Mason Vision Day, the food bank matched $30,000 of the funds raised in the form of credits in its online ordering portal, expanding access to a greater variety of foods.

“Food insecurity is often an experience compounded by other forms of basic need insecurity, such as financial instability and unstable transportation,” said Dwayne Hamilton Jr., assistant director for basic needs at Mason’s Student Support and Advocacy Center. “The Home Delivery Program promotes consistent and healthy food intake while addressing financial and transportation barriers that impact access. Confronting these obstacles enables students to devote their full attention to their academics.”

Mason staff fill orders and arrange for food delivery to students. CAFB conducts surveys with students at the beginning and end of each semester to measure the degree of a student’s food insecurity, as well as students’ subjective measures of well-being: physical health, mental health, and ability to focus in class.

Mason will provide academic data with anonymized identifiers, including information on students’ enrollment intensity, time to graduation, and attrition and retention.

“We spent a lot of time with our evaluation specialist designing the surveys the students will receive,” said Tadele. “We have to be able to understand whether [the program] works or not.”

“One of our broader goals with these partnerships is that we want to give students the support they need to finish their programs and then earn living-wage jobs and be able to contribute to our local economy. It’s a cyclical effect,” said Grace Brown, CAFB strategic initiatives manager.

This article originally appeared in University Life's Succeed magazine in a slightly different form.

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Capital Area Food Bank announces a boost for Mason Vision Day—and beyond

Colleen Rich — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 20:15:28 +0000

Capital Area Food Bank announces a boost for Mason Vision Day—and beyond Colleen Rich Wed, 04/05/2023 - 16:15

Support Mason Vision Day

Read about Mason Vision Day

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Patriot Pantry partners with Capital Area Food Bank for food delivery
November 30, 2023
Donors helped address food insecurity at Mason during Mason Vision Day 2023
July 20, 2023
Capital Area Food Bank announces a boost for Mason Vision Day—and beyond
April 5, 2023

�� has an important ally in its work to counter food insecurity among its students: The Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB) has announced that it is partnering with Mason to address campus food insecurity and will match the funds raised during Mason Vision Day.

“We are thrilled to have a partner in Capital Area Food Bank, because our organizations share a common understanding that it takes more than a meal to solve hunger,” said Rose Pascarell, Mason’s vice president for University Life.

The CAFB is the anchor of hunger relief infrastructure across the Washington, D.C., region, providing more than 50 million meals to communities in the area each year. Like Mason, the food bank approaches the problem of food insecurity through multiple channels and achieves its mission through many kinds of partnerships—including those with food distributors and retailers, farms, institutions, individuals, and other nonprofit organizations.

CAFB’s generous investment around Mason Vision Day is just a start: CAFB is building on existing relationships with community colleges in the Washington, D.C., area, and looking to Mason as one of the first four-year public institutions with whom it will partner to offer services and resources.

“The success of our region’s students creates positive ripple effects for individuals, families, and our local economy that will last well into the future,” said Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank. “The CAFB is committed to partnering with institutions like Mason to ensure that hunger is never a barrier to a student’s academic achievement, or to fulfilling their highest potential.”

It is through these partnerships, and multiple solutions and community partners, that Mason hopes to move beyond food distribution to focus on tackling the root causes of hunger and inequity.

“Food insecurity is a complex problem that we simply can’t address through one solution,” said Pascarell. “Partnership with organizations, like the Capital Area Food Bank, that understand the scope of the problem and provides leadership in our region to make a difference, goes a long way toward helping us address food insecurity more holistically on our campuses.”