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Current Reading: BHS Food Pantry Provides Aid to Berkeley Community

These students in the BHS Culinary Vocational and Technical Education Class work in the BHS food pantry twice a month.

Every two weeks, on the first and third Tuesday of each month, the tables on the sidewalk at the intersection of Bancroft Road and Martin Luther King Road are filled with fresh produce, ready-to-eat meals and dry goods. With the help of high school students, community members filled bags of food home for free from the food pantry run by the Public Health Culinary Vocational and Technical Education (CTE) class at Berkeley High School (BHS). Berkeley Institute of Technology (BTA) provides similar pantry on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.

The students in this CTE class are taught by Debra Hill and work in the pantry twice a month. On other days, they prepare meals and then eat together in class because they understand diet-related diseases and local policies related to health and diet. 

As part of the CTE internship, students are paid to work in the pantry. According to Hill, who teaches both biology and life sciences, the pantry is not only beneficial to community members, but also to BHS students participating in the program. Her course aims to educate students on how to support themselves and how to ensure that people in the community get enough food and healthy nutrition. 

"The pantry is a great way to provide food and survive, really; for many families and individuals, [this is a way] to get healthy food," Hill said. "And this is just a good way to promote healthy foods for students instead of processed high-sugar foods."

Jezra Thompson, director of the region's horticulture and cooking projects, has a similar view. She said that for many students who learned about food insecurity through the pantry and how to contribute to ensuring that community members get enough healthy food, working in the pantry is a meaningful experience.

"The pantry helps connect the work, students, and teachers of all our schools in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) with the common goal of improving the health and well-being of our community," Hill said. 

The food distributed through the pantry comes from the Berkeley Food Network (BFN), which collects food from food companies and Alameda County Food Banks, and also recycles food that would otherwise be wasted from local farms, grocery stores, and restaurants. BFN cooperates with many other organizations to distribute food, including religious institutions and local non-profit organizations. 

Hill said that everyone deserves fresh and healthy food. "However, in our society, there will always be people in need who cannot get healthy food in a consistent way." 

Especially in the past two years, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many inequalities have become more apparent. According to World Bank statistics, by 2020, 30% of the world's population will not have enough food, which means that 320 million people will be added within a year. 

"COVID-19 highlights the inequality in our society... There are a lot of people, you know, they don't have many," Hill said.

Even during the closure of schools and businesses related to the pandemic, the pantry can continue to provide food for people in need at Berkeley. Since 2018, every year when students in the public health CTE class first proposed the idea of ​​creating a pantry, the students in the class have been helping the community to feel full while continuing to learn important life skills for themselves. 

As other BUSD schools have observed the success of BHS and BTA pantry, some schools have considered opening their own pantry. As Hill said, "I think [the pantry] is a bit like, you know, COVID-19." The possibility of more pantry means that Berkeley has the potential to reduce hunger. "We should provide food for everyone who needs food," Hill said. She continued, "Everyone deserves healthy food."

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