Northwestern State University is one of 31 public and four private Louisiana higher education institutions across the state that has been approved for hunger-free campus designation.
Act 719 of the 2022 Regular Legislative Session, sponsored by Baton Rouge State Representative Barbara Freiberg, established criteria for Louisiana higher education institutions to earn a hunger-free campus designation and authorized the Hunger-Free Campus competitive grant program to support the institutions in their efforts.
A 2020 national study indicated that approximately 29% of students at four-year colleges and 38% at two-year institutions experience food insecurity. The numbers for students of color are even higher. These data are not surprising given Louisiana’s high rate of students living in poverty.
Act 719 established very specific criteria for campuses to receive the Hunger-Free Campus designation, requiring them to do all of the following:
• Establish a Hunger-Free Task Force;
• Inform students who receive needbased financial aid of their potential eligibility to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits;
• Hold or participate in at least one antihunger awareness event per academic year;
• Assess the need to provide access to oncampus food distribution, a local off-campus food pantry, or an oncampus food pantry;
• Submit information on where the campus food pantry resides and contact information for the food pantry representative responsible for the management of campus food pantry efforts; and
• Provide a summary of campus efforts in the following areas:
• Hunger-Free Campus Task Force,
• SNAP benefits communication informing students of potential eligibility,
• Anti-Hunger campus event (date, time, location, participating schools), and
• Access to charitable food distribution on your campus(es) or local community food pantry.
To carry out this legislative mandate, the Board of Regents launched several strategies and outreach efforts, including: • Surveyed public and private institutions to create a landscape analysis of hunger-free activities at Louisiana institutions; • Determined exemplary institutions leading this work in Louisiana and met with staff;
• Created the Hunger-Free Campus designation application and distributed it to institutional student affairs teams;
• Worked with Feeding Louisiana, the Louisiana Charitable Food Summit, and the Louisiana Anti-Hunger Coalition to help support on-campus food pantries; and
• Facilitated two rounds of application submission and review.