Announcing RAH—Rutgers Against Hunger

November 17, 2008

Members of the Rutgers Community:

A tragic result of the nation’s troubled economy is that people are hungry in New Jersey. The number of people seeking food assistance has risen by as much as 30 percent in some areas of our state. Rutgers can and should help.

During our long history as New Jersey’s land-grant university, Rutgers and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station have pursued research and developed educational programs to benefit the state’s farmers, consumers, and businesses. As the economic crisis puts more children and adults at risk because they do not have enough to eat, we at Rutgers have a responsibility to do more to help them with our considerable resources in those areas.

Today, we are launching Rutgers Against Hunger (RAH), an initiative combining volunteerism, research, education, and donations to help feed New Jersey’s hungry and address food security. We are enlisting the entire Rutgers community—students and alumni, faculty and staff, and the concerned public—in helping us stock food banks. We are also committing our resources to provide nutrition information to consumers and to conduct research toward improving the production, packaging, and distribution of food. And we will work with farmers and gardeners across the state to grow additional fresh vegetables to meet the needs of families who cannot afford them.

Most immediately, Rutgers is partnering with the New Jersey Federation of Food Banks on a yearlong food and fundraising drive. Food collection receptacles will be placed in university buildings and at select events, including our final two home football games. We will announce food drives with special themes on a regular basis, and encourage “food drive challenges” among student groups, departments, and offices to compete for a good cause. We will also make it easy to donate online.

As we launch RAH, we take inspiration from the many good works our community already undertakes. These include efforts such as the recent food drive sponsored by Rutgers Recreation that collected 100 bins of canned goods, a similar drive being led by social work students on the Camden Campus, the toy and winter-clothing drive going on this month at Rutgers–Newark, and the volunteer support that Rutgers students provided at a recent fundraiser for Elijah’s Promise soup kitchen in New Brunswick.

I urge you to visit the Rutgers Against Hunger website—http://rah.rutgers.edu—to learn more about what we are doing and how you can help. You can also call 732-445-INFO if you need more information.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey