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sp: students team
up to fight hunger
Hey Hey Hey! Jonathan Cao-Nguyen here, but you can call me J-Cao! I am a currently a fifth year student at the University of California, San Diego, majoring in Human Development. I hope to graduate after this year and move onto my career goal of becoming an optometrist and opening my own private practice. It's definitely a difficult career path, but I know that I can do it!
Here are a few quick things that you need to know in order to get to know me! I am a huge foodie. Being a foodie isn't about just eating, but it is about enjoying the history behind the food, the interest in the ingredients, and enjoyment of the presentation. It is pretty much an appreciation of an artwork! I am also a huge social media junkie. I'm active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, Youtube, Pinterest, and any other social media that is popular out there. I have my own food blog at (thecookingcao.blogspot.com) and I also have my own Youtube channel! My lifestyle is pretty active, but I enjoy every minute of it. With attending a school from California, that means I hail from the California-Nevada-Hawaii District. Last year, I served as the Governor for the District and this year, I have the wonderful pleasure of serving on an International scale as the Students Team Up to Fight Hunger Ambassador.
Students Team Up to Fight Hunger (STUFH) is a non-profit organization devoted to assisting and inspiring food drives at colleges and universities across the country. The mission of STUFH is to help feed the hungry while at the same time raising awareness among college students about hunger in their local communities. STUFH had its roots in the end-of-year food drive, where college students preparing to leave campus for the summer could donate any unused food rather than discarding it. Since its founding in 1999, STUFH has reported over five million pounds of food raised by colleges throughout the nation through various types of food drives. In the past year, STUFH involved more universities in the fight against hunger and has sponsored innovative food drives including STUFH THE BUS and food fight competitions. STUFH is also proud of its continuing partnership with Circle K International (CKI) with clubs on 450 campuses. Thousands of CKI college students are dedicated to community service and to fighting hunger. STUFH invites colleges and food banks to send their comments, food drive results and photos to our website to inspire other universities to become involved.
A few project ideas to get you started this upcoming September/October season is to get the word out about STUFH to your college campus. Host educational workshops that anyone can attend (members or even non-members) and talk about why hunger is such a huge issue and tell them why our generation of students are the ones who can help fix this problem. During this time, it is recruitment season for CKI so utilizing STUFH as a major talking point can help people be inspired to help and join your club. Also, host a canned food drive on the spot at your recruitment table and create a Wall of Food. While handing out fliers, tell people that they can bring a can of food and help contribute to a weeklong wall made of canned foods that people have donated by bringing it back to your recruitment table. As the week progresses in your tabling then you can make an even bigger wall of food. Lastly, at your General Meetings, host a day where members can bring a canned food! With all of the new members that you bring to your first meetings, they can each bring a canned food and you will be collecting tons of cans already! 10, 20, 40, 80 cans? Any amount is a great start.
STUFH is very important to me as I know what it feels like to cherish a simple meal. Coming from a low-income family, my family would receive monthly food bank boxes that contained the simpliest of meals. Cheerios, apple sauce, cheese, etc. The food box was simple and there were some things that you would not think about eating, but for my family, that was the only income of food that we can have because food was hard to afford. Today, I still hold an original can of food that I received from the food bank as a reminder that there are families out there who are going through what I went through. These are people who don't know what they could be eating for their next meal and I don't want people to have to worry about their next meal like that.
I truly hope that you learned a lot about me and about this wonderful organization. Stay tuned for the next issue of this newsletter for even more STUFH updates!
SERVICE AMBASSADOR
jonathan cao-nguyen