Although Grab and Go was originally founded with the aim of addressing poverty in the city by feeding unhoused people, Cube was soon approached by students who were facing hunger themselves, causing her organization to expand its focus to include the local university. After more than 20 students had reached out to Cube seeking support, she and her team began a campaign called #FeedTheMind, speaking to one of the consequences of hunger on students: a significantly deleterious impact on one’s ability to focus and study.
On 27 May 2023, Grab and Go hosted their first student-focused sandwich drive at a large residence in Govan Mbeki, providing resident students with sandwiches and coffee. The drive also saw them distributing sanitary pads, another key need students are often unable to meet due to funding delays.
While the organisation still provides sandwiches to unhoused people in the city each Saturday, the shift in focus signified by their #FeedTheMind campaign speaks to the extent to which student hunger has become a much more widespread crisis.
It is often assumed that university students do not require any support to meet their basic needs - that being able to access an institution of this calibre means one is ‘covered’ for necessities such as food. However the evidence has been mounting that a significant number of university students are unable to meet these needs during the course of their studies. Government funding assists to cover the costs of many but not all of the financial needs of students, and it is typically in the area of food that that financial shortfall is most keenly felt.
And for students, hunger has a pernicious effect, undermining their chances of reaching the very goal to which they have committed in undertaking a university qualification. Regular hunger and poor nutrition create significant barriers to student success - not only is it much more difficult to concentrate on one’s studies and sustain one’s efforts to complete assigned work, but anxiety and depression are also exacerbated. Students are also particularly sensitive to the unfortunate stigma surrounding the need for food support.
The increase in hunger amongst students is a concerning indicator of increasing food insecurity across our society more broadly, and of the growing need for a variety of initiatives that will improve not only access to food but will also facilitate the participation of citizens and communities in a more just food system.
Having graduated in 2019 with a diploma in Business Management, Ms Cube currently works as an Assistant Manager at Clicks and credits the teamwork of her board as the reason they have been able to keep going and to expand their efforts.
The name of the organisation – Grab and Go – was chosen for how it spoke to the context in which it was birthed; targeting high-crime areas in the city that meant people had to ‘grab the sandwiches and go’.
The Grab and Go Foundation is one example of a project run for students, by students. Driven by a desire to contribute meaningfully to the crisis of hunger they witnessed in the city, the Grab and Go team, as students themselves, were able to pivot when they realised the problem was closer to home. In collaborating with this organisation, Mandela University’s Food Systems is proud to be able to support their efforts. Even more so, we look forward to learning with and from one another as we explore novel solutions to overcoming the crisis of student hunger, and hunger more broadly, in our society.
The Grab and Go Foundation team in 2023