The Community Foundation for the CSRA (CFCSRA) and Golden Harvest Food Bank are continuing their partnership to attack food insecurity head-on on a local college campus.
The Knights Corner Food Pantry opened in Aiken Technical College’s Student Activities building in the fall of 2024. That anniversary was celebrated during a recent open house.
A study by the Government Accountability Office found that 3.8 million college students, that’s an estimated 23%, face food insecurity. Of that number, 2.2 million are classified as very low food security, meaning they often skip meals because they cannot afford to buy food.
“It’s important to note that even though our mission is to meet the educational and workforce needs of Aiken County, it is also to help make sure that our students are successful inside and outside of the classroom,” said Dr. Forest Mahan, President of Aiken Tech. “Sometimes the challenge of food insecurity can be something that could prevent a student from being successful in their career endeavors.”
Shell Berry, President and CEO of CFCSRA, told ABD that educational institutions are often called upon to care for the whole student, not just their education. Students can face barriers ranging from a lack of transportation to get to a grocery store to a lack of money to buy nourishing food.
“Oftentimes, kids are ‘scholar shipped’ into these programs, and scholarships do not include fees or books or housing or food, and those are all parts of a student being able to stay on track and stay successful in what they do,” she said. “We as a community are nothing without our students getting a great education and then can go be contributing members of society in their jobs, in the military, in raising families.”
Berry said CFCSRA is fortunate to have its community grant program to fund programs like the Aiken Tech food pantry. Those are unrestricted dollars that are given to the Community Foundation throughout the year, that the foundation manages on behalf of the whole community.
“Businesses can support our community grants fund, which is our unrestricted fund, and we can make sure these dollars get where they want to be, or they can just match dollars that we are deploying in the community, because they’ll know that that’s a program that has met the highest standard of effectiveness and impactfulness. So, businesses can come along and do that with us.”
Mahan said the college needs its partners to make this work successful. That’s where CFCSRA and Golden Harvest stepped in to help.
“Right here in Aiken County in 2023, 13.4% of the population was estimated to be food insecure. That’s one in seven people,” Jake Griffis, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Golden Harvest, said. “So, if you look around in the room right now, there’s a good chance someone here today is experiencing food insecurity. Hunger doesn’t always make itself known. It often lurks in the lives of college students who balance coursework, jobs, and family responsibilities quietly, impacting their ability to succeed.”
The Knights Corner Food Pantry is Golden Harvest’s first post-secondary education program in South Carolina.
Mahan said the food bank shows the power of multiple partnerships.
“We all have our own unique missions, but we actually all have the same purpose, and the purpose is to improve the lives of the people in our region,” he said. “We do it through education. Other groups do it through support, through funding, and through food support. So, I believe that this is just a testament to this, the unique aspect of this region to work across multiple agencies and multiple groups to fulfill a single need for our students.”
Since it opened in the fall of 2024, the Knights Corner Food Pantry has provided food to more than 200 students.
Augusta University also has two on-campus food pantries, one on the Summerville campus and another on the Health Sciences campus.
To learn more about both pantries or to donate, visit:
https://www.atc.edu/StudentAssistance
https://www.augusta.edu/student-affairs/open-paws.php
