Civic Engagement Food Drive 🥫

APASA’s Civic Engagement Project to donate food to local community fridges, as told from the perspective of Jennifer Lee, our Co-Executive Director, and Charley Kim, our Web Development Director

JEN:

Every year, APASA’s Civic Engagement Project provides an opportunity for attendees to actively take part in hands-on advocacy work. In recent years, we have partnered with Advancing Justice LA to volunteer in translating immigration paperwork, and have hosted a campaign with UCLA’s Asian Pacific Coalition (APC) for which students pledged to engage with political activism through voting and education.

This year, our Co-Advocacy Chairs, Melissa Tungare and Evelyn Zhang, wanted to kick off CEP by supporting our local communities where food insecurity is prevalent. Community fridges are the results of grassroots initiatives to build communal fridges in food deserts and other places where acquiring food from a store is inaccessible. The goal of APASA’s Fridge Fest was to collect food from those in the USC community, sanitize all the nonperishable and fresh goods we collected, and deliver them to and clean three different fridges around Los Angeles.

After donation boxes were left at different points on campus and our Advocacy Chairs tabled to spread the word, the food was collected and brought to our day-of sanitation and sorting room in Taper Hall. Here, five sanitation and three sorting stations made the process of separating and cleaning the food super quick! We were elated to see that even after stocking a full box for each location, we still had extra food to donate. Our volunteers were able to grab a Chipotle burrito for lunch before heading out to the fridges 🌯

CHARLEY:

After all of the food was prepped and loaded, it was finally time to head out to the fridges! I had the privilege of driving four other lovely APASA members to the fridge down in South Central. Parked a few blocks down, we trekked on over, carrying our box full of food in the LA heat. We quickly got to work, putting on our blue gloves so we could start wiping down the pantry shelves and restocking it with canned and dry goods (the granola bars looked very tempting to my empty stomach, but I refrained). We made sure to show the fridge itself some tender love and care; we carefully emptied its contents, (discarding any food that had gone bad) so that we could clean the interior. We got into every nook and cranny, taking out the various shelves and compartments and giving them a good scrub 🧽. We then loaded it with all of the noms: fresh fruit, veggies, and cold drinks for anyone who needed one. When all was said and done, we were ✨ sparkling ✨ in s w e a t, but we all agreed that the effort was well worth it.

Fridge Fest might be a continuous initiative for APASA’s advocacy team, so be sure to keep an eye out if you’re interested in participating in the future! Special thanks again to Melissa and Evelyn for organizing the event, Sara and Will for the amazing graphics, all of the E-Board and Interns who helped out, and everyone who was able to donate food or money to buy food for the fridges. We can’t wait to see everyone again next time :)