Photo by Sean Jeter
Student Kelsey Miller contributes to OSPIRG's Hunger Clean Up event by weeding the beds.

The annual Hunger Clean Up broke boundaries with a day of community service and pledges to curb hunger and poverty on local, national and international levels.

The national event was hosted in Ashland by the Southern Oregon University chapter of the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group. Half of the funds raised will help support Uncle Food’s Diner, which provides one free meal a week in Ashland.

Mandara Matson-Bell, OSPIRG hunger and homelessness student coordinator explained the purpose and goals of the event.

“It has an equally national, international and local effect,” she said.

The other half of donations will be split with 35 percent going to education, training and research on combating hunger and homelessness on a national level. The remaining 15 percent will be pooled to provide a year’s worth of emergency medical supplies and food for refugees in Darfur and the Sudan. It will also help support The Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe that works to protect young girls from abuse.

Teams of five people each had goals of raising $500. By taking donations from friends and family members, each participant pledged to spend one day helping local organizations. Last year local efforts raised $1000 according to OSPIRG Campus Coordinator Sayla Eisner-Mix.

Groups volunteered with the Ecological Coalition of the Siskiyou’s Community Garden on campus and also with the Jackson County Fuel Committee splitting wood.

Other groups conducted a canned food drive to donate to the Ashland Emergency Food Bank.

“We’re trying to break the Guiness World Record for most food brought in, in one day,” Matson-Bell said.

Student PIRG chapters all over the country participated in the annual event which is a project of the national student campaign against hunger and homelessness.

“It’s a really simple way a community can get together,” Matson-Bell said. “In times when the economy is down people give less.”

For more information on the Hunger Clean-Up visit www.hungercleanup.org .