Nursing alumna addresses food insecurity among students in rural Virginia school district

As the district nurse manager of Orange County Public Schools in Central Virginia, Liberty University School of Nursing alumna Cameron Welch (’25) oversees all nine of the school system’s nurses (one in each school), managing medical emergencies and assessing the well-being of over 5,000 students. But in her two years in the position, she has also taken on a targeted struggle for many students under her purview — food insecurity.

Welch recently expanded the schools’ food programs to create Feeding OC, an initiative that brings food and the love of Christ to her community.

When Welch started with OCPS, she became aware that many families in the district were struggling to regularly put food on the table. She was asked to revive the district’s Backpack Program, which fills bags with shelf-stable food for students in need to take home. However, she recognized the “nutritional gap” of only providing non-perishable items, excluding meat, eggs, milk, cheese, fruits, and vegetables, and was inspired her to launch the Fill the Fridge campaign to stock two designated refrigerators in different parts of the district with perishable items to distribute. The two programs now make up Feeding OC and depend entirely on donations. Multiple sponsors and volunteers with local churches help fulfill the shelf-stable donations and give money for the “fridge fills,” which Welch shops for herself.

“We started there (with one refrigerator), and it just took off,” she said. “We started getting inquiries from all kinds of families, and we really didn’t know the amount of need that we had in our community until then. We live in a low-income farming community, so a lot of the time these kids and their families aren’t getting what they need. That’s when we step in and say, ‘What can we do for you?’ and ‘How can we bridge the gap?’”

She said the program helped feed hundreds of families last year, giving out thousands of meals, including Thanksgiving and Christmas meals with turkeys and chickens. They also helped with emergency meals on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s an amazing feeling to help families and kids get that foundation of what they need,” she said.

Through the program, Welch also connects families with local churches that may help financially by paying for a month’s rent or other bills. Through helping provide for essentials like food and a steady place to live, Welch said she can go above the standard responsibility of her job, demonstrate the love of Christ, and potentially open others’ hearts to Him.

“I truly feel like it’s something that God just kind of (handed) me, and He was saying, ‘This is where you’re going to be and what you’re going to do.’ I give it all to God,” she said. “In this capacity, I’m able to say, ‘Jesus loves you, and I love you. The school gives support, but let me give you more support. Let me see how we can really make this situation better for you.’ We see a lot of ‘church hurt,’ so when they see a church that wants to help them, a resource that wants to help them that’s really Jesus-centered, they may say, ‘Maybe I’ll give Jesus one more chance. Maybe I’ll give the church a chance.’”

Welch had epilepsy as a student and said it was the nurses who cared for her in her teens and early 20s that inspired her to pursue a career of caring for others. She had earned associate and bachelor’s degrees in nursing but when she decided to further her education while working as nurse, she chose the Master of Science in Nursing and Healthcare Administration dual degree program through Liberty University Online Programs.

“My aunt went to Liberty, and she inspired me to go further in my education,” she said. “I felt like it was really important for me to continue my nursing education in a Christ-centered university. I’ve been a Christian since as long as I can remember, and I know the importance of loving people where they are and loving people no matter who they are. Liberty was certainly the college for me.”

Through Liberty, Welch said she learned how to make Christ the center of her work and infuse her job with His love.

“The biggest thing I took from (Liberty) was learning how to work within the community and showing, at the core of it, the love of Christ. The entirety of what I learned about that and nursing overall has been applied in one fell swoop, really, and that includes working as the hands and feet of Jesus. When we think of donation work and work inside the community, it’s demonstrating Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people nowadays are scared of showing that love, or they’re scared to receive that love, and I’m very thankful to be able to learn how to show it in a way that doesn’t scare people but still doesn’t hold back that love.”