By Chloe Adams
Boston University News Service
A baker at Fort Point’s Flour Bakery and Cafe in Boston handed two volunteers for Student Food Rescue, a Boston University student-led initiative aimed at combating food insecurity around the city, a brown paper bag full of baked goods.
The volunteers loaded into a white minivan owned by BU and driven by a third SFR member before transporting the food to Boston’s Safe Haven Shelter for Women, a transitional home for women with mental illnesses.
“People need to eat — it’s kind of our most basic need,” Bradley Rauscher, a 23-year-old SFR volunteer from Franklinville, New Jersey, said. “Even if you have enough money to buy this basic necessity, it may not be enough to buy healthy food to sustain a healthy lifestyle.”
Although Massachusetts is one of the wealthiest states in the United States, 1.9 million adults reported food insecurity statewide last year, according to a 2024 annual report from The Greater Boston Food Bank, a non-profit organization providing hunger relief to Eastern Massachusetts.
SFR, funded by BU’s Community Service Center, has about 75 active BU student-volunteers who deliver approximately 3,000 pounds of food around the city Monday through Saturday, according to SFR program manager Eleanor Hoffpauir, 21, from Oakland, California.
Aside from Safe Haven, SFR serves free food to more homeless shelters, low-income residencies and food pantries around Boston, Hoffpauir said. Recipients include Brookline Food Pantry, First Baptist Food Pantry and South Cove Plaza which offers affordable housing, she said.
The group began in 1988 when BU students wanted to provide relief to people facing food shortages, she said. Now, SFR is partnered with 12 Boston-based donors, including Whole Foods Market, Breadwinners, Einstein Bros. Bagels and Iggy’s Bread, to help feed about 1,000 individuals weekly, Hoffpauir said.
Sasha Tcherepanova, a 21-year-old SFR volunteer from Holliston, Massachusetts, said that “people’s health depends on their access to nutritious foods.”
Tcherepanova’s view is supported by research in an article about food insecurity’s health outcomes published in 2022 by Frontiers in Nutrition, a food science and human health journal. Inadequate nutrients can lead to conditions such as malnutrition and heart disease, the article states.
Tcherepanova said the type of food SFR delivers depends on where it gets collected from that day. While Whole Foods donates shelf-stable items and produce, local bakeries often contribute bread loaves, muffins and pastries, she said.
Grant McConachie, a 26-year-old SFR volunteer from Portland, Oregon, said his efforts are not time-consuming but still make a “substantially helpful” impact on people facing food scarcity.
He said deliveries from Clear Flour Bread and When Pigs Fly Breads, two Boston bakeries, to United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts, usually takes less than two hours.
Like McConachie, Hia Ming, a 28-year-old SFR volunteer from Singapore, said he feels fulfilled providing “delicious” bakery bread to food-insecure individuals.
“When we load the bread into the van, oh my goodness, it smells heavenly,” Ming said. “I hope that this alleviates whatever ongoing burdens that people have in a small way at least.”
