The Loyola Hive Café is starting up a Meals on Wheels program
The Hive Café has started its Meals on Wheels program for the second time since the beginning of the pandemic, where their free lunch at the Loyola campus is to-go, and 25 meals are delivered to the downtown campus Hive Cafe.
The Hive Café is a student-run solidarity co-op that focuses on bringing healthy and affordable food to students. The location at the Loyola campus has a free lunch program to combat the food scarcity on campus.
“We decided to do our delivery meals because the campus was closed,” said Alanna Silver, the Free Lunch Administrative Coordinator at the Hive Café.
“We know there are some students who live close to campus or who may be on campus doing labs or research, so we wanted to provide free healthy meals to them.”
With the COVID-19 lockdown last year, the Free Lunch Program at Loyola had to adapt by doing to-go meals. This week, with school going back online, Meals on Wheels returns.
“This time around, we are delivering lunches only to our downtown cafe location for students studying at the SGW campus, and to Woodnote, the CSU’s housing community,” said Silver.
Silver said that students studying downtown can register on the Hive Free Lunch Facebook page, and that the program would deliver their meals to the SGW Hive Café everyday at 1 p.m.
“Since we just started our Meals on Wheels program, we’ve only had about 15 students register each week,” said Silver, who explained that they can serve 25 people at the downtown location.
The free lunch program has benefited many in the past, like Danny Faheem, a first-year psychology student, who’s been taking advantage of Hive Café on the Loyola campus,“I’m really happy the lunch program is back. Since there isn’t really any vegan food, or any food in general, on [the Loyola] campus, it really saved me last semester,” said Faheem, adding that he used to go almost everyday when open.
“We’ve had such a positive reaction from students, and the positive response on social media has been almost overwhelming,” said Silver. “We love what we do so we’re happy to be back.”
Silver explained that if campuses do not reopen for classes this semester, the program will be expanded to help more students.
“Not only are we doing the Meals on Wheels program, but we also did our winter food drive, we started a community art showcase for queer and BIPOC students, and we’re writing a recipe book with the most popular lunches we’ve served in the last year,” said Silver.
“We’re also in the process of making a cooking channel so people can watch how we make some of our favourite vegan recipes,” explained Silver. “We don’t just want to serve our lunches and then close the doors, we want to engage with the local and student community and fight food insecurity in every way we can.”
Graphic by James Fay
