Campus ministry feeds students homemade meals

With finals around the corner and the stress of summer-job hunting, St. Thomas University students find it difficult to meal prep and eat healthy. Campus minister Vivien Zelazny wanted to help and started what would become a well-known event on campus – the drop-in-lunch. 

Every Thursday, Zelazny provides homemade meals to around 30 students. She has been doing this since September 2018. 

Zelazny said food is important to campus ministry because they run the university’s food bank. 

“I started up a steering committee for the food bank and one of the things that we heard is that the need for food on campus wasn’t just for canned foods to take home and cook, but also people really longed for a homecooked meal,” she said. 

She cooks the meals in crockpots and offers both meat and vegan options.  

Fourth-year student Jerry-Faye Flatt said she always brings her lunch and never buys it on campus.  

She said one of her friends invited her to the drop-in-lunch and she’s never stopped going ever since. 

“It’s really nice to be able to have that day off a week where I can come in, get a hot meal, usually a really comforting one and be able to socialize and hang out some friends,” she said.  

Third-year student Alexa Navas, who is the campus ministry student worker, said the drop-in-lunch is open to everyone. 

“It doesn’t matter if you want to talk religion or not talk religion at all … all that it matters is that you want to connect to the communities,” she said.  

About 10 people went to the drop-in-lunch when it started. Zelazny left for maternity leave on December 2018. But when she came back a year later, 20 students were regulars.  

Now, she gets 30 people each Thursday. 

“We were running out of food, so I’ve recently upped the amount of food that I’m making,” she said. 

Each meal costs around 80 dollars. Zelazny said the drop-in-lunch also wants to teach students they don’t have to spend a lot of money to eat good food. 

“When you buy simple ingredients and do the cooking yourself, rather than buying meals completely prepared, you save a lot of money that way,” she said. 

Zelazny said it’s fulfilling when students tell her they wouldn’t have eaten if it wasn’t for the drop-in-lunch. 

“Sometimes, students will say ‘I didn’t have time to pack my lunch and I don’t have the money right now to go to Subway, so thank you, I’m eating because of you,’ so that’s a really nice feeling,” she said.