The OU Food Pantry reached a record number of clients due to increasing economic hardships in Oklahoma, ranking the fifth hungriest state in the U.S.
The OU Food Pantry saw 300 people within the first week of being open at its new location in the Cate Center, said Audrey Williams, the pantry’s associate director of outreach. She added the pantry sets a new record every week, helping around 400 people in one week after a month of being open in the new space.
“The jump from 130 (people during its last week in Stubbeman Place) to now 400 a week in a month. I mean, that's insane,” said Matt Marks, campus care coordinator. “So far, we've already set records. The numbers just continue to go up every year we've been open.”
As the pantry continues to see an influx in clientele, Marks said a huge factor is the state of Oklahoma’s economy, leading to individuals going hungry.
“We know times are tough right now. Oklahoma is one of the hungriest states in our nation. We're in a top-10 list we don't want to be in,” Marks said. “As a state, there are a lot of people that are hurting right now. And that trickles down here to OU.”
In Oklahoma, one in eight people face hunger, with over 180,000 being children, according to Feeding America. Forty-five percent of eligible schools in the country offer all students no-cost meals, while only 15 percent of Oklahoma schools offer no-cost meals. According to Hunger Free Oklahoma, 14.6 percent of households in the state are food insecure, and over one in five children don’t have access to the food they need.
Nitin Rangu, a senior psychology major and the director of OU Food Pantry, said the economic situation locally and nationally has led to more clients relying on the pantry.
“The rise in inflation, food prices, gas prices and the housing crisis (have) a lot of people struggling right now,” Rangu said. “I've talked to a few clients, specifically students on campus, who are struggling with the increase in the cost of their groceries and their daily or weekly budgets. It's the first time some of them have ever had to use the food pantry.”
OU Food Pantry’s move from the edge of campus at Stubbeman Place to a central location in the Cate Center has led to more traffic in the pantry and ultimately more clients who utilize its services. Following the recent location change, Marks said the pantry was granted additional spaces for storage.
“It really changed the game,” Marks said about the location change. “OU really helped secure this location for us. I think it surprised all of us that this would become available. It kind of fell into our lap. Every time I walk in there I’m just amazed.”
Marks said the pantry started including clothes in the last one or two years, and a bookshelf for both novels and textbooks since last spring.
The OU Food Pantry offers clothing, books and home decor along with traditional food and hygiene products.
The OU Food Pantry has seen services like clothing and books being used at a higher rate. In its previous location, the pantry didn’t have the space for the majority of the donated clothes, so they instead went into storage. Since opening the new location, those clothes have been pulled out of the boxes and hung up on clothing racks, Williams said.
With the new expanded location, the OU Food Pantry also decided to expand its hours, now serving on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. instead of the previously set two days per week.
The pantry was able to incorporate more of a “community space” in its new location, where students can watch TV, study and relax during their free periods.
“The space itself has started to send that message we were hoping the rebrand would: This is so much more than a pantry,” Williams said. “This is not a place you need to be ashamed of, where you grab your bag and go. This is a space where you can come and study, where you can hang out, and it's been really encouraging to see people using it like that. Everything fell into place in a really special way for us.”
Beginning by welcoming clients into the pantry as an operations manager, as well as being active on the social media team before switching to her current position, Williams started volunteering during her freshman year of college in the spring of 2020.
Williams said the pantry has adjusted how often it's buying food. It normally orders food every two weeks, but after serving the large increase in clients, it had to order more food after one week.
“That’s always the goal,” Williams said. “We’ve always known there was more need on campus. It’s very fulfilling for all of us to know we’re meeting so much more of that need.”
Williams said a new team was formed this year, solely dedicated to picking up produce from Crest Fresh Market and looking for partnerships to recover food from. This Food Recovery Team repurposes and repackages food to give out to clients, Marks said. Williams’ development team, which secures corporate sponsors and donor relations, has been essential because all the funding comes from the efforts made in those partnerships, Williams said.
“We're continuing to grow. The momentum is definitely still there,” Williams said. “We’re here. We’re a part of OU. We’re a part of your day.”
Excited that so many people are using the OU Food Pantry, Williams said the pantry is reaching people in a much more significant way than ever before, with a new space that can accommodate so many people.
“Every day when we're in that space seeing all the people, it's a very physical reminder of how important this work is,” Williams said.
The pantry’s staff moved locations over the summer in the span of a few weeks. Williams said it made all the difference.
“We would connect with people who didn't even know we had a food pantry. We would just hear that so frequently,” Williams said. “Now to be in this much larger space, in the heart of campus, we’re able to naturally encounter people. That’s been essential for reducing stigma and making it more than just a trip to the edge of campus. We have the room to really welcome people, and we have more of a community space to make people feel comfortable.”
Williams said the pantry started working on making a regular schedule to restock items such as plates, toys, games and stuffed animals. It typically retrieves these items from the Sharing Tree, a nonprofit organization in Moore. The Food Pantry also partners with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and Feed the Children, both Oklahoma-based nonprofit organizations.
“We really want to expand beyond a food pantry. There are so many more needs beyond food, and if we can help provide clothing, it's going to help a lot of people,” Marks said.
The idea of rebranding the OU Food Pantry began last year when it began expanding into clothing, books and home goods rather than strictly food. The pantry held meetings to discuss a potential new name, Williams said.
The OU Food Pantry attempted to run one name up the ranks at OU, but it didn’t get approved as the university wanted to go another direction, Marks said.
“We decided to just keep it the (OU) Food Pantry because everyone here already knows the name. If we try to change it, people are going to still call it the (OU) Food Pantry,” Marks said. “We can still get our message across by keeping the same name. Let's just keep building what we're building.”
Marks co-founded the OU Food Pantry when he was an undergraduate in 2017. He participated in a group tasked with bringing a food pantry to OU when he acted as executive assistant of the OU Student Government Association at the time.
“It had been something that they wanted for years, and it just hadn't come to fruition. So (that) was the right time to make it happen,” Marks said. “We spent about a year planning, organizing and coming up with ideas of what a food pantry on OU’s campus would look like. There were a lot of ups and downs. There were some challenges, but after a year, we finally made it happen.”
Matt Marks, student director of the OU Food Pantry, addresses the crowd at the grand opening of the food pantry March 22, 2017.
In spring 2017, the OU Food Pantry opened. Marks finished his undergraduate years as the student director, then became graduate director as he continued his education at OU. After, he stayed on the staff and became the campus care coordinator and adviser to the student volunteers at the pantry.
One of Marks’ favorite stories is about a client who walked into the OU Food Pantry three years ago and picked up a box of cereal. She took the box home and placed it in her pantry. When her grandson visited, he looked in her pantry and burst with excitement at seeing the box of cereal.
That client returned to the pantry to tell Marks about how ecstatic her grandson was to see the box of cereal.
“It can be something as simple as a donation of a box of cereal,” Marks said. “It can be volunteering your time for an hour with us that can make the biggest impact on someone's life. Maybe the client’s going through really tough times. The smallest thing can make the biggest difference.”
