Comfort Food With A Side of Charity

A grilled cheese sandwich is perhaps the perfect comfort food to fuel overworked college students studying late into the night. It is simple, satisfying, and reminiscent of days spent on the playground or in mom’s kitchen instead of in a lecture hall or library.

That’s one of the reasons that Feel Good CU, one of the newest organizations on campus, seeks to bring this comfort back into students’ lives by making grilled cheeses on select nights throughout the week. But not only will students feel good after enjoying a sandwich during their study break, they can also feel good about the fact that they are fighting world hunger. All the profits from the grilled cheeses, sold at an economical $2.50 each, are donated to the Hunger Project, an organization that works to find a “sustainable end to world hunger” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Dana Pavarini, CC ’08, the president of Feel Good CU, first found out about Feel Good from her interest in The Hunger Project. “It wasn’t until later that I found out about the ‘college version of the organization,” said Pavarini, who has been working since last year to start a chapter of Feel Good at Columbia.

Although Feel Good CU has only been operating for two weeks, the Feel Good national organization officially began six years ago, and since then has spread to 13 colleges across the country. Many of these colleges, such as Middlebury and the University of Texas, raise thousands of dollars annually. The Hunger Project then uses this money to create a solution to world hunger beyond just donating food. In addition to educating people in important subjects such as farming techniques and nutrition, the organization also seeks to empower women, who they claim are traditionally responsible for family health and nutrition.

Despite the fact that Columbia’s chapter of Feel Good is so new this year, it has already seen success in raising money for the Hunger Project. On its first night alone, the organization made nearly two hundred dollars. However, this success did not come without initial obstacles. “We had a lot of problems with dining and finding a location at first,” said Pavarini, who initially hoped to serve the grilled cheeses in Lerner Hall during lunchtime. Feel Good CU currently operates at JJ’s Place on Sundays from 4 p.m. until midnight and on Wednesdays from 8 p.m. until midnight. The organization plans to expand their hours once the demand for their sandwiches grows.

Much of Feel Good’s initial success can also be attributed to the generosity of local grocery stores. “Westside Market has been great in helping us out,” Pavarini said. The store currently donates all of the bread, butter, and cheese used to make the grilled cheeses. Also notable is the fact that Feel Good CU uses only organic bread and offers customers the choice of wheat or white for their sandwiches. In the future, the organization hopes to expand their menu by offering sliced tomato in the grilled cheese or tomato soup to complement it.

However, much of their proposed expansion is dependent on students’ interest. Feel Good CU hopes to increase its members so that it can be open more nights of the week and expand the menu. They would even like to bring in a speaker from the Hunger Project if the organization continues to thrive. The group’s presence at the Activities Fair and even its Facebook group have attracted more than 20 members who currently help out when the booth in JJ’s Place is open.

Most important to the survival of the group, though, is other students’ interest in buying the grilled cheeses. “I hope people see that the $2.50 they are spending is a direct donation [to the Hunger Project] and a significant contribution,” Pavarini said.
Although the problem of world hunger can seem overwhelming and unlikely to be solved any time soon, Feel Good seeks to make volunteering and contributing to the solution more accessible to students. In other words, as the organization says in its motto, “We are ending world hunger, one grilled cheese at a time.”

Pavarini continues this idea with her own motto about Feel Good CU: “You can’t do everything, but you can do something.” And enjoying a grilled cheese in between chapters of a tedious novel is the perhaps the perfect “something” to do—end your own hunger and well as the world’s.