A major push will start in October at UC Berkeley to begin helping an estimated 10,000 students apply to CalFresh, a federally funded nutrition program that issues a free debit card for groceries to those who qualify. According to the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which runs the program on campus, most individual college students who are eligible can receive up to $193 in benefits a month.

A CalFresh "super clinic" will be held one Friday a month to introduce approximately 50 students at a time to the program. Currently, about 25 students attend CalFresh clinics on Fridays in Stiles Hall, on the lower level of the ASUC Student Union's Martin Luther King Jr. Building, for one-on-one help with their applications. Pre-registration is required for all clinics. Logistics for the super clinics will be available here soon.

In the first week of school alone, the pantry - next door to Stiles Hall in the MLK Jr. Building and part of a toolkit of campus food security resources - ran out of food twice. The pantry has been visited about 1,820 times since school started; during each of those four weeks, 455 students dropped by to pick up the five non-perishable items they're allowed twice a month.

To read more of Gretchen Kell's article, please click here.