The Wesley Food Pantry, located at Goodwin Avenue and Green Street in Urbana, hopes to rebrand and de-stigmatize the term “food pantry” by making sure students feel comfortable reaching out for help.

The Wesley Food Pantry offers a week’s worth of groceries to students every first Monday of the month, in addition to a variety of other services such as health screenings and community outreach.

“In addition to offering groceries, we also offer our clients a way to connect with community resources,” said Katie Thomas, director of Wesley Food Pantry. “Last week, we had the Illini Medical Screening Society. We also distribute free children’s books to the children that visit the pantry.”

The food pantry has two locations: one on the University’s campus at the Wesley United Methodist Church Student Center and one at Parkland College, and sees about 15 to 20 University students each month and 20 to 30 Parkland students, according to Dawn Longfellow, operations manager.

“This is a resource that is available to (students) so they don’t need to feel embarrassed to come for food,” Thomas said.

As of last week, the Wesley Food Pantry board and the Wesley Food Pantry RSO on campus began discussing changing the name to something else, Thomas said. But the idea is still a work in progress.

“I think the stigma involves more than the name,” Longfellow said in an email. “The perception is that people who need to visit a food pantry are homeless or in extreme poverty. This is far from the truth. Many of our clients are working or recently had an unexpected crisis.”

Thomas said Wesley is working on getting the word out about their services in order to attract more undergraduate students, since a majority of the students who go to the pantry are graduate students.

“Promoting the pantry is really about word of mouth. So, we educate our volunteers about what food insecurity means and how it might affect people they know, so that they can suggest coming to a pantry to friends,” Longfellow said.

According to a recent study in the American Journal of Health Promotion, “15 percent (of the 237 undergraduate students who were surveyed) were food insecure.

An additional 16 percent were at risk of food insecurity.”

Taylor Thurston, sophomore in Business, is the new fundraising director this year for the Wesley RSO, and said she plans to raise money for the food pantry by holding a fundraiser at a local business, with half of the proceeds going toward the pantry.

According to Thomas, the pantry receives about 30 to 40 percent of its funds from the Wesley United Methodist Church, and the rest from grants and fundraisers within the community.

Thurston said the food pantry should not be a one-time visit, rather she hopes the students can build a relationship with the volunteers and understand they are helping students help themselves.

“It is more than just putting a bandaid on the issue, it’s about trying to solve what is really going on because when you are lacking in food you are often lacking in other resources as well,” Thurston said.

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