Many incredible student leaders have worked with Augsburg’s Campus Kitchen (CK) program over the years. Current CK student leaders Alana Goodson and Chouneng Khang interviewed several CK alumni to learn more about their experiences with the program. 

Yasmin ‘2015: Biology Major and Religion Minor

What sparked your interest in Campus Kitchen?

• I wanted to be a part of helping our neighbors in need. 
• I love what Campus Kitchen stands for! I admire its mission to serve the community that surrounds the campus by making healthy food accessible.

What was your role with CK?

• My role was to help build sustainability and capacity building. I recruited volunteers, organized events that educated others about food equity and provided ways people could access healthy foods.  
• I attended food deliveries at sites like Ebenezer Towers and Brian Coyle. 
• I hosted an event where I invited special speaker LaDonna Redmond, a food justice advocate to discuss issues surrounding food equity. 
• I helped with fundraising through Give to the Max for Campus Kitchen. 
• I explored different modalities for volunteers to participate in reflection so that volunteers get a chance to understand the impact of their volunteering. 
• I worked in the community garden. I coordinated with gardeners about their plots and addressed any issues that they had.  

 What were some of the highlights of your time with CK?

• I attended the Food Waste & Hunger Summit in Arkansas. I learned about different ways we can combat ending hunger and poverty. It was a fun road trip! At the end of my year of service, I also presented at the 2016 Nonprofit Leadership Conference about my experience with Campus Kitchen and Health Commons. The theme of the conference was courageous engagement across differences which fit perfectly with my experience!

• I learned leadership, communication, time management, planning & organizing, teamwork, conflict resolution, empathy, adaptability & flexibility, networking, and cultural awareness.

What are you up to now? How does it connect to CK?

• I’m attending the American University of Antigua School of Medicine. I’m currently in my 3rd year of clinical rotations in New York.  
• Working with Campus Kitchen solidified my pursuit in working in community health and focusing on serving underrepresented communities. 

Advice for current, future, past CK interns/volunteers?

• Get to know the community you’re serving by building relationships. Take time to listen to community members’ stories– their stories matter.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you have any cultural or religious differences when making food and delivering food with the community members. They love having conversations with students. 

Because of the stay at home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, student employees of the Sabo Center are writing about the work they do. This entry is from Ed Loubaki. If you would like to support Campus Kitchen’s work, feel free to donate through Augsburg’s donation page. You can designate your donation to Other>Campus Kitchen.

Hello, my name is Ed Loubaki, my pronouns are she/her/ hers. I am a first-year student and I work with the Campus Kitchen in the Sabo Center. Through Campus Kitchen, we work to provide food that is healthy and accessible. The Campus Cupboard food shelf is open every weekday, and it’s relieving for many Augsburg students that there’s a place on campus to access free food. Augsburg is quite fortunate to have Campus Kitchen because its students and surrounding comm

unity get to enjoy meals and fresh produce together. As a Campus Kitchen student employee, I love that we work to reduce food waste on campus and address food insecurity in our community. Campus Kitchen at Augsburg works hard to not only care for Augsburg, but also for the surrounding community at Ebenezer Tower Apartments, Trinity Lutheran Congregation, and the Brian Coyle Community Center.

My experience at Ebenezer Tower and the Brian Coyle Center has been beyond amazing. It did not take long to bond with community members. Every meal shift brings me joy. Each meal spices up the conversations, and sometimes it’s hard to leave. Hearing laughter here and there makes the job extra fun. At Ebenezer, I get to hear stories that soothe me and help me make better decisions in the future. These seniors are like the grandparents I never had; they make me feel like their own. Brian Coyle, on the other hand, has this energy that is incredible. You just can’t turn from it. At times, my urge to do work with Campus Kitchen increases because it doesn’t even feel like work – it feels like a great meal with friends and family. I’m looking forward to the time when we can gather again in-person to enjoy food and conversation together.

The Sabo Center is proud to co-sponsor this benefit, please join us.

The Cedar Cultural Center, Augsburg University, and KFAI present:

630 CEDAR AVE FIRE BENEFIT with Thunder Band, Brass Messengers, Becky Kapell and The Fat 6, Jack Klatt, Amjet Kemet, Tatum and Tessa, Ray Barnard & Clark Adams, and more

Saturday, January 11th, 2020 / Doors 7:00pm / Show 7:30pm

Standing Show

$10, $20, $30, $40, or $50

This is a standing show with an open floor. The Cedar always reserves a section of seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to their Access page.

Proceeds donated to 630 Cedar Fire Relief Committee. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Can’t make it to the concert? You can still make a donation to support the families affected by the fire, here.

The Campus Kitchen Program has had one main source of transportation for more than 10 years, a minivan named Clementine. Our steadfast and beloved van (which was named by students) has become too worn to carry out our work, so we are in need of a new mode of transportation.

By the Numbers

This is some of what a van allows us to accomplish:

Six = the number of days each week Clementine is used to transport food, students, and staff.

100,000 = the number of meals Clementine has delivered to neighbors in need in the last 10 years.

27,996 = the number of pounds of recovered produce Clementine has hauled in one growing season from local farmers markets so it could be distributed to neighbors in Cedar-Riverside who have little access to fresh food.

Help us Keep on Rolling

We know we’ll have to move on without Clementine, and when a van allows us to get so much done, we know we can’t go for very long without finding a replacement vehicle. Here’s how you can help:

Make an online donation.

Make a donation the old-fashioned way. Send a check to Augsburg University, Campus Kitchen Van Fund, 2211 Riverside Avenue, Minneapolis, MN  55454 Campus Box 10.

Every year at Commencement, one graduating senior receives the Marina Christensen Justice Award for demonstrated dedication to community and working in solidarity with under resourced communities. This award recognizes work that is in keeping with the personal and professional life of Marina Christensen Justice.

Nominations are submitted in the spring with nominations for other Augsburg Leadership Awards, and are judged on the following criteria:

• The depth and breadth of community involvement
• A strong commitment to addressing the systemic roots of the issues
• A personal and professional commitment to work with under resourced communities
• Bold and courageous leadership
• Authentic and sustained engagement with community and issues.

Each year Minnesota Campus Compact presents awards at their annual statewide summit. At this year’s summit, an Augsburg student, staff member, and community partner were recognized for their leadership and collaborative work. The 2018 award recipients were:

Student Leadership Award: Janet Nguyen

As the student food shelf coordinator this year, Janet built a base of committed volunteers, increased participation and donations, and even navigated a successful recovery from a small fire. Janet brought a bold, equity-focused lens to the food shelf by diversifying offerings and working to destigmatize food insecurity.

Civic Engagement Steward Award: Jane Becker

Jane Becker, Augsburg’s Head Volleyball Coach, organizes more than 500 athletes and their coaches each year to engage with youth in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood and beyond. She has created new summer sports clinics, an on-campus homework help program, and an alternative spring break program for young people.

Community Partner Award: Cedar Riverside Community School

Cedar Riverside Community School is the only school in the Cedar Riverside constantly adapts to best serve the educational needs of an ever-changing population. School leaders and teaching staff are committed to deep, reciprocal partnership with Augsburg, so that CRCS and Augsburg students are prepared successful futures.

Twice a month, students and community members gather in the Cedar Commons space adjacent to Augsburg’s campus, intentionally coming together to build relationships across faith and non-faith traditions and learn from each other’s experiences, stories, and convictions. Coordinated through the Sabo Center for Democracy & Citizenship, Interfaith at Cedar Commons is one of many initiatives based at the Sabo Center that connect the Augsburg campus and the wider community. Gathering around a topic and often a meal, participants discuss subjects ranging from Islamophobia to religious holidays, human rights, political activism, and creation stories. The inter-generational group involves faith communities from the Augsburg campus and the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, and integrates the Interfaith Scholars program, cultivating student and community-based leadership.

Shoshana Freund and Bethany Keyl are two Augsburg students who have been involved with Interfaith at Cedar Commons as current or past interns with the core team of students and community members that plans the gatherings. They described the interfaith events as open, welcoming spaces where topics and faith and non-faith perspectives are understood to be complex. For Shoshana, an atheist, the complexity of these discussions were refreshing. Speaking from her experience on the planning team, Shoshana described how the topics chosen for the events are designed to help people from all paths–including those who do not practice a religion–to find common ground through storytelling and experience sharing. Often this leads to new, profound understandings of people and communities who might otherwise have remained “Other.” Interfaith is an opportunity for students and others to see that “people of other belief systems are not antagonists,” Shoshana said. “Their beliefs don’t exist to contradict yours.” Bethany noted that the gatherings are an opportunity to find “common ground” and to “foster understanding” through the experiences and stories of people who come from different traditions.

Beyond story-sharing and relationship-building, Interfaith at Cedar Commons is also focused on building skills for inter-faith organizing. Activities such as power-mapping, one-to-one trainings, and other aspects of community organizing have been regular additions to the 2016-17 school year interfaith meetings. These skill-based sessions, along with the practice of having nuanced and complex conversations about meaning, core commitments, and the role of different faith traditions in the world with community members from campus and beyond, makes Interfaith at Cedar Commons a program that embodies the Sabo Center’s commitment to “create a culture of civic agency and engagement among students, faculty, staff, and our broader community so that graduates are architects of change and pioneers in work of public significance.”

After twenty years of democratic education and practice, the Jane Addams School for Democracy met for the last time earlier this month. From the beginning, its founders sought to free and cultivate the talents, cultures, and interests of people from diverse backgrounds and traditions and engage in a minimally structured, non-hierarchical way that allows participants to shape the agenda. The Jane Addams School for Democracy brought immigrant families, college students and other community members together to do public work and learning. It was inspired by the vision of democracy, productive citizenship, and popular education held by settlement house pioneers like Jane Addams, who created Hull House in Chicago in 1889.

As we consider the current state of our democracy, the principles and practices of Jane Addams School are a much needed antidote to the polarization and division that colors public discourse. We have faith that the lessons of Jane Addams School can continue to support a more just and democratic world. In 2007, the Kettering Foundation published a book called Voices of Hope: The Story of the Jane Addams School for Democracy which features 22 essays by 12 Jane Addams School participants, including non-native English speakers, and more than 75 photos.