Eats 101 continues barbecue event to fight food insecurity

One in four kids face food insecurity in North Carolina, according to No Kid Hungry North Carolina.

To educate and help solve this issue, the Eats 101 class, an honors seminar in food and culture, joined forces with No Kid Hungry North Carolina to raise money and awareness of this issue with their event, Q for the Kids, on Thursday.

Tamara Baker, the communications and program director of No Kid Hungry North Carolina, said she enjoyed seeing students get involved with food insecurity.

“It’s exciting that we see student engagement on such important social issues and we are very honored that they would be willing to adopt our mission as a cause they’d like to support,” she said. 

Baker said No Kid Hungry North Carolina organizes a variety of programs to help stop food insecurity. 

“The mission of No Kid Hungry is really to help provide access to federal nutrition programs for low income children and that population in North Carolina, it’s over 60 percent of the kids in our public schools are now eligible for free and reduced priced school meals," she said. 

"So we are really concerned about three of the federal nutrition programs that feed kids and that is school breakfast and summer meals and after school meals. And of course we care deeply about school lunch and making sure kids eat a healthy meal three times a day like we all need.”

Q for the Kids was originally an idea for a class project that graduate Holden Sasser created. He said his father had been involved with No Kid Hungry for over 20 years and when a professor challenged him to raise money for a cause he believed in, he took a page out of his father’s book.

Now that he has graduated, Sasser said he hopes the event will continue long after he is gone.

“The goal is just to teach people about No Kid Hungry and the cause and to bring people together around a cause, celebrate it over great food and bring all the restaurants and the whole community together,” Sasser said. “The goal is just to spread the word, raise some money and eat some good food.”

Abby Gay, a student in the Eats 101 class, said that she enjoys the event because it combines food and culture into something she sees as beneficial for her community.

“I think that a lot of people aren’t aware of what food insecurity is necessarily and that there are so many people within our own community, especially children, that are having problems with food and going hungry,” Gay said.

Leslie Morgan, an adjunct professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, returned to Q for the Kids after she originally heard about it in 2016 from one of her students.

“I love that the students are involved and organize it and take ownership of it and advertise it," she said. "I think that’s a great thing. I want to support them.”

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