Food banks

Fall 2020

How you can help during the COVID-19 pandemic

It’s a familiar promise around WSU: Cougs help Cougs.

There a number of ways to fulfill that promise during the COVID-19 pandemic, from supporting students to giving your time. And we can expand that generosity to our communities, as well. Below are a few suggestions of places and ways you might be able to help out.

Supporting students

Each WSU campus has a Student Emergency Fund to help students struggling during this crisis.

The pandemic is taking an economic toll as well, so you may want to support scholarships.

Food security

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Fall 2020

A viral response

In the face of tough circumstances, Washington State University alumni and faculty did not merely endure, but adapted and engaged. » More ...

Winter 2019

Buckin’ hunger

Farmers and cowboys fight food insecurity at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon by gathering food and donations to help food banks in Portland and other areas around the state. » More ...

Cougar Food Pantry sign on the WSU Vancouver campus

Winter 2018

Food security at WSU

Food maps, resources at Washington State University, and how you can help people get enough food

Students and others around the state increasingly face difficulty getting enough nutritious food for themselves and their families (read more in “Hungry”). Below are food maps of the Palouse (detailing farmers markets, food banks, community gardens, and other resources), resources on WSU campuses, and ways you can help.

Food maps

The Taste of Home: Local Food in the Palouse-Clearwater Region (University of Idaho resource)

Map the Meal Gap (Feeding America)

Food Atlas for the Puget Sound Region

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Winter 2018

Hungry

At Rosario’s Place, food on the shelves comes and goes like a tide. When staff at the Women’s Center at Washington State University, which manages Rosario’s, puts out a call for donations, stock rises and then falls again as students take what they need to get by.

Rosario’s Place has a private entrance on the Pullman campus, and that simple fact, says Women’s Center director Amy Sharp, reduces stigma; no one asks who you are or what you are doing. You just come in, take what you need (or leave what you can). In addition to food, Rosario’s also stocks baby and toddler supplies … » More …

Spring 2015

Liz Siler ’78—Hungry to help

Around the back of the Pullman Safeway, a shopping cart emerges through an unmarked door. A man in a stocking cap pushes a precarious load of bakery items to the minivan waiting by the curb. Moments later, he returns with a second cart. Then a third.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Liz Siler ’78 and her cart-steering husband Pat ’61 load their van nearly to the roof with day-old loaves of generic and artisan bread, hot dog buns, cakes, muffins, bagels, croissants, and chocolate Cutie Pies.

Destined for Pullman’s Community Action Center Food Bank, the donations will replenish the shelves in the “bread room” for … » More …