A Note From the Founder

30 years. An extraordinary milestone. An extraordinary amount of change.

Since our founding in 1993, Meal Exchange has gone through many evolutions and facilitated a great deal of impact - from the donation of over $3M in food to support local communities in need, and helping found the Campus Association of Food Banks, to reporting on the rise and magnitude of student food insecurity, and helping shape policy to address the root causes. 
Throughout this learning journey, we’ve grappled without our ignorance, the fleeting satisfaction of donating food, the complexity and glacial pace of systemic change, adapting programming based on available funding, and the willingness to put our entire budget on the line during the pandemic to support those in need.

In reflecting on the past 30 years, I want to share a few lessons that may be useful for you:
1. Starting is everything. At 17, I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I had more food than I could eat, and others didn’t have enough. I wasn’t alone. So I started. I asked others to join in, and they did. 
2. Persistence pays. My university had little desire to allow students to donate their meal plan money because it ate into the profit margin. While I tried to negotiate a solution with them, they weren’t having it. So we were persistent, and opted to do it anyway. That same philosophy was leveraged by many students we’ve collaborated with over the years who navigated the challenges of their campus food system to create change. 
3. Be humble. While I had little idea what I was doing organizationally, I had faith I would figure it out. I wish I had taken a similar, humble approach to understanding the root causes of food insecurity earlier in my journey.
4. Faster alone, but further together. While the initial idea may have been mine, the impact was ours. If I were to start Meal Exchange again, I would form a team (including advisors) much sooner, welcome their input and insight, and leverage their talents to go further.
5. Diversify funding. We were heavily dependent on grants from foundations and the government, most of which focused on short-term impact, but we should have nurtured relationships with alumni to develop a diverse individual giving strategy that enabled us to build for the long-term. 

To continue helping others in their efforts to address student food insecurity, we’ve updated MealExchange.com with a collection of resources and tools that support students and campuses to create resilient, just, and sustainable campus food systems. These resources encompass many lessons learned through Meal Exchange’s 30 year history, and are a result of countless collaborations with passionate students and partners from across the country.

I’m grateful to have collaborated with so many friends, volunteers, board members, and staff to mobilize and celebrate the tremendous power of students addressing food insecurity in Canada. I’m also grateful for the team’s awareness, support, and confidence to sunset the org when our contributions and thesis were no longer as meaningful or impactful.
So it is with admiration and gratitude that we share this final newsletter from Meal Exchange. 
Thank you for the past and ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Rahul Raj