Hi there! Our mission is to address food insecurity for the CU Denver community. We believe in destigmatizing the need for assistance, creating an accessible and welcoming environment for students, staff, and faculty in all contexts to feel comfortable seeking food resources and community support. We do this primarily through our free grocery store on campus - Milo's Market, where folks can come and get a variety of snacks, ready-made meals, and cooking ingredients. We seek to include culturally relevant foods, nutritious options, and desirable options for folks. We believe in promoting autonomy. In addition to Milo's Market, we also have our Swipe Out Hunger and Caring for Caregivers program, where we provide free meal swipes to folks on campus, as well as supportive materials for people who are caregivers! This semester alone (August 2024-October 2024) we have served 1,982 students through Milo's Market alone, and aim to build our ability to serve more people and fulfill a greater need level!

We recognize that food insecurity looks different for every individual, and there are a variety of personal contexts at play, as well as broader systemic factors that create disparities in access to nutritious, satisfying, and culturally relevant foods for people. In Spring of 2023, 49% of CU Denver students reported experiencing food insecurity. Of those students that utilize Milo's Market, a large portion of them are international students, who come to the US with very little support in maintaining their basic needs in addition to their schooling. We believe that everyone deserves to eat well and have their basic needs provided for, so we keep this in mind by ensuring we attune to the broad range of folks' contexts and particular needs! Our pantry was created in 2018 in response to students reporting food insecurity. Initially, we had very little resources, and a small but dedicated team of students and staff worked together to build our resources and outreach. In the past few years, our usage has increased exponentially; a direct result of the passionate and patient dedication of our team, as well as an attunement to the diverse needs of CU Denver's community.

We really appreciate Joy's Kitchen's emphasis on shared reciprocity and community building. We believe in creating interdependent networks of support that can allow our impact to grow and be sustainable over time!

We have our own campus van and could help with picking up food and volunteering at Joy's Kitchen! We are also connected with other

We are hopeful that we could play a supportive role driving to pick up food in our van and taking them back to Joy's location! In return we would appreciate receiving food donations to keep in our market for CU Denver students to utilize for free. We also are interested in setting up a volunteer program with our team to have more members help out at Joy's Kitchen a few times throughout the semester.

Milo's Market Roles and Responsibilities: provide food pick-up and delivery help with the use of our van once per week
Joy's Kitchen Roles and Responsibilities: provide food to Milo's Market for CU Denver students to enjoy

Given that we are both making efforts to combat food insecurity and promote sustainability, we hope that we can continue to find ways to expand our impacts and reach more folks through our collaboration. At Milo's Market we are 100% funded by donors currently, and those amounts are currently inconsistent. Although we are looking to apply for more grants, we are also very interested in forming strong partnerships with others where our other resources, like our labor, van, and potentially more, and combine to mutually serve our organizations. We believe that this interdependence is what creates long-term sustainability and promotes public goods and services across the board

We are planning workshops in partnership with DUG gardens for the upcoming year, and would love to include Joy's Kitchen staff in those once we have the details sorted! These workshops may include composting/avoiding food waste, seeding, organic gardening 101, etc. These will be public events for folks in the CU Denver community, but we would be happy to include Joy's Kitchen team as well!