Associated Students, Inc.’s Beach Pantry will be holding its weekly pop-up drive-thru on Friday, Sept. 18 for about 200 enrolled students.
The official food pantry for Long Beach State students, the ASI Beach Pantry works to offer non-perishable food items for students in need. Although the pantry’s physical location remains closed for the foreseeable future, the program remains operational as a socially distanced, drive-up event.
“Given the circumstances, I think our team is doing an excellent job mirroring the experience we had on campus,” said James Ahumada, ASI senior communications manager.
Students are able to access the pantry’s available resources by registering for the event on EventBrite, using the password “asibeachpantry,” and can find this information on BeachBoard every Tuesday at noon.
According to Ahumada, ASI only sends the location of the event to participating students in an effort to allocate resources for those who need them most.
“We don’t publicize [the location] since we don’t want non-students to attend since the food and supplies are intended for enrolled students,” Ahumada said. “Our staff work to make the information and resources equally as available, however more formatted for less interaction.”
Ahumada said that about 200 to 250 students take advantage of the pop-up pantry each week, which is “near on par” to the attendance at the on-campus location prior to this semester.
Before the on-campus location closed for the fall, students were allowed to visit the Beach Pantry a few times per week to select a certain amount of food items. Students were, however, limited on the amount of weekly visits to the pantry as well as the amount of food taken per visit.
With the pop-up format, ASI employees can provide students with roughly the same amount of food they would receive over the course of their weekly visits in this one-time visit.