University of California, Santa Barbara
IN-27: Innovation D

The Food, Nutrition and Basic Skills Program is a coalition effort between staff, students and community members which decreases food insecurity within the UCSB community. This is being done by addressing not just the need for food, but all of the areas that come into play regarding food. Many students come into the university environment with little knowledge regarding food, particularly nutrition, food preparation, grocery shopping, and budgeting. Without these skills, students may become food insecure, skipping meals and eating poorly for the sake of cost or convenience. Through education, we help students to eat well and achieve their full potential here at UCSB. The program addresses issues that play a role in hindering student access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food, through four tracks:
Budgeting and Planning: This track helps students plan and build strong budgets, such as financial planning, creating shopping lists, navigating resources and couponing at cooperatives and grocery stores, finding the best living option to save money, among others.
Kitchen Basics: This track provides students with the skills to learn how to set up your first kitchen in an individual household or while living with multiple people. This includes the basics of cooking, of setting up a kitchen pantry, of properly equipping a kitchen, etc.
Cooking and Nutrition Basics: Students learn, through food demonstrations, how to cook nutritious and balanced meals, how to address food safety, how to read food labels, etc. This track provides individuals with a range of skills ranging from the basic of cooking your first meal to learning how to integrate more nutritious food into your diet. The sample of workshops includes: maximizing leftovers, the soup guy, healthy snacking, etc
Connecting to your food: Our diets have a global impact. This track aims to help students understand the relationship that they have with the world around them through their dietary choices.
The Food, Nutrition and Basic Skills program has brought together fourteen different partners under the leadership of Associate Students Food Bank, so as to leverage the resources of the broader UCSB and adjacent community. University Center Dining has provided organizational abilities, programing and chefs to teach workshops. The Assistant Director of University Center Dining was a major partner throughout the planning and inspired most of the University Center chefs to donate their time to teach the workshops. This is an unprecedented level of donated staff time. Funding for the program came from the UC Global Food Initiative. Additional programming was provided by UCSB Sustainability, UCSB Health and Wellness, UCSB Housing and Residential Dining Services, Isla Vista Food Cooperative, Isla Vista Tenants Union, Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships, UCSB Community Housing Cooperative, Santa Barbara Student Housing Cooperative, and Gaucho Farmers’ Market. UCSB Residential and Community Living also provided space and promotion.