Beat Auburn Beat Hunger ended its six-week competition against Auburn University on Nov. 14, winning the competition and collecting 260,453 pounds of food for the West Alabama Food Bank, which was over 100,000 pounds more than last year’s result.
During the six weeks leading up to the Iron Bowl, Beat Auburn Beat Hunger is an annual student-run food-drive competition against Auburn that strives to bring together students, Alabama fans and people in the community as much as possible to help the West Alabama Food Bank and simultaneously raise awareness about hunger, Executive Director Charland said.
“I think that this year, more than ever before, we were really able to get students on campus involved,” she said. “We had a lot of different clubs and organizations on campus that were able to really get excited about their involvement with the drive, and so we really got to celebrate those efforts.”
UA students brought cans to various locations on campus, bought t-shirts, sent money over venmo to UA_babh and donated directly to an online donor drive page and shared the page on social media to contribute to the initiative.
Charland said being able to push monetary donations this year, something they had not really done in the past, was successful to the campaign. Every dollar donated counted as two pounds of food toward the drive, which was cheaper and more effective for people to do than to actually purchase food. She encouraged monetary donations because giving money allows the food bank to buy what they need at any given time that they may lack.
Bailey Chandler, coordinator of volunteer management in the center for service and leadership and faculty advisor for Beat Auburn Beat Hunger said this campaign is important every year for the food bank.
“The West Alabama Food Bank really relies on our campaign to feed the West Alabama and all of the counties that they oversee, and so I think every year [the campaign] is finding new ways to show how important it is,” she said.
Chandler said Beat Auburn Beat Hunger harps on bringing the awareness more and more to campus and keeping the importance of the campaign in the forefront so students and the community understand the campaign’s significance.
Charland said Auburn raised around 230,000 pounds for the Food Bank of East Alabama. Beat Auburn Beat Hunger has been fighting poverty and hunger in West Alabama since it was created by the Center for Service and Leadership in 1994.
“This isn’t just to beat Auburn, but it’s really to help individuals in the West Alabama eat and have a meal on the table three times a day versus one they think they might have,” Chandler said.
