Students Organize "Change for Peace" On Dec. 9

A communication student-organized “Change for Peace” campaign to benefit the FreeStore Foodbank will take place Thursday, Dec. 9, at the UC/Vanderbilt men’s basketball game at Fifth Third Arena at Shoemaker Center, as athletes and other students collect change for the food drive. The student organizers of the campaign, along with a representative of the FreeStore, will be recognized at a special halftime presentation.

The Change for Peace campaign is part of a large citywide partnership called the Peace Village, founded by UC School of Social Work Professor Steven Sunderland. Sunderland first organized the Peace Village in response to the 2001 riots in Cincinnati and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He says the organization has now grown into the country’s largest university-developed hunger and peace program.

The Peace Village first organized the massive citywide food drive at an Oct. 2 Peace Village/Just Community Leadership Conference on UC’s Uptown West Campus. Each of the area school, college and religious organizations in attendance was challenged to organize their own food donation programs. In addition to support from across UC, Sunderland says 14 area schools – public, private and parochial – have “joined in the effort to gather food and understand the connection between hunger reduction and peace.”

Sunderland says the FreeStore Food Bank in Over-the-Rhine was selected as the beneficiary because the FreeStore is facing a 30 percent increase in the demand for food. “The working poor are struggling to pay for their rent, their utilities, their medical bills and their food, and the food budgets are shrinking,” Sunderland says. “They go to the FreeStore to try to make up for the loss and as a result, the FreeStore is facing an avalanche of people without enough food, so we were approached to help.”

UC’s Raymond Walters College collected more than 300 cases of food for the FreeStore. UC’s School of Social Work collected hundreds of pounds of food to be delivered to the FreeStore for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Organizer Jacque Joiner, president of the School of Social Work’s Graduate Student Association, says collections started in November and that students plan to continue collections through June. Other UC participants in the Peace Village food drive include UC’s fraternities and sororities, Campus Ministries, the Arnold Air Society, College of Medicine, Physicians for Social Responsibility, College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences and the English Department. The Peace Village is also supported by UC’s Just Community initiative to build community, civic responsibility and character.

Citywide participants include:

• Aiken High School
• Clark Montessori
• School for Creative and Performing Arts
• Shroder Paideia
• Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy
• Archbishop Moeller High School
• McAuley High School
• Mount Notre Dame High School
• Roger Bacon High School
• Ursuline Academy of Cincinnati
• Children’s Hospital
• Hebrew Union College
• Nativity Elementary
• Fairfield High School
• Ross High School