Liberty students, athletes contribute to local organizations throughout the semester’s food drives

Liberty University’s residential students and athletes were able to provide children and families in the Lynchburg community with meals this semester as a result of successful food drives and donations by local businesses and their peers.

The process began on Sept. 24 with the LU Serve Food Disparity workshop, where over 100 students packed more than 1,000 backpacks as part of Food for Thought’s backpack program, according to LU Serve Director of Local & Domestic Engagement Chad Nelson. “Through this program, underprivileged Lynchburg City School students are able to receive weekend meals.”

Donations poured in from sources on and off campus, Nelson said, with volunteers collecting food outside the Kroger grocery store on Wards Road over two weekends and Liberty’s Commuter Services providing bins at their own location and multiple football tailgates.

While the food drive concluded on Oct. 19, Sodexo, Liberty’s dining services provider, and the local Food Lion donated a combined 3,450 pounds of food in November, filling 490 additional backpacks. Sodexo also collected donations at The Grid in the Montview Student Union.

Student-athletes spent special time outside the field of play and in the community during the months of October and November, including a Halloween-themed canned food drive and shopping for and delivering Thanksgiving dinners to worthy recipients. Jennifer Burris, a student-athlete development coordinator for the Academic Affairs for Athletics office, outlined the special project “Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat” during October. After they had distributed flyers throughout the month encouraging neighborhoods to gather canned goods for food, different teams went “trick-or-treating” around Lynchburg and collected cans from door to door.

“The teams also donate their own contributions in addition to those donated from the community, and it is a huge hit each year,” Burris said. “This year we collected 3,174 canned goods, and our women’s lacrosse team won the competition for collecting the most cans on the donation day.”

Liberty’s football team also used the Thanksgiving season to buy and personally deliver special meals to roughly 12 different families. During the final game of the regular season, they were also able to collect 10 bins of canned food for Lynchburg Daily Bread.

Five bins of cans were also received at the Nov. 29 home game for Liberty’s men’s basketball team.