CHAPEL HILL, NC – The Pantry Bowl is an annual philanthropic event hosted jointly by the Carolina Cupboard and NC State’s Feed the Pack food pantry.
They raise money to feed university students who struggle with food insecurity, a reality for up to one in five college students.
Together, the universities raised $148,099.93, outnumbering last year in both monetary total and individual number of donations.
The Pantry Bowl is also done in the spirit of competition, where each school’s number of individual donors is totaled to name a winner. This year, NC State ‘won’ the Pantry Bowl with a total of 1,128 donors. That is only 21 more donation’s than UNC.
However, as Carolina Cupboard president Kayla Brown points out, it’s not all about winning.
“Overall, I’m like very proud about how the Pantry Bowl went. Although we did not win, the real winner here is that both pantries got both resources that we all needed and it gave us the right promotion that we needed,” Brown said.
Promotion was one of the largest unexpected effects of the Pantry Bowl for Brown. She said that various alumni, and even current students, reached out to her to say they had no knowledge of Carolina Cupboard’s existence, much less the work they do for the Carolina community.
Brown also said that the money from the pantry bowl is needed to provide some perishable items to students in need as they are not frequently donated.