OSU students tour U.S. for ideas on combatting hunger at home

Students at Oregon State University are looking for a better way to battle hunger.

Participants in OSU's Austin Entrepreneurship Program and Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) recently completed a nationwide tour to gather information and experience how nonprofits are fighting domestic hunger issues.

Now they are taking the project one step closer to home, visiting facilities in Oregon as part of their "Hunger in the Homeland" tour. It began Tuesday in Corvallis and was to include three Albany locations Wednesday and today.

"We are adding on to what we did this summer," said Carol Hahn of Albany, a student and staff member at SIFE who will take part in the Linn County visits.

The summer program was inspired by a campaign pledge by President Obama to eradicate childhood hunger by 2015, according to the students. Their Oregon tour will include 24 locations following up the 6,000 miles of summer tour that included stops in San Francisco, Phoenix, Nashville, Raleigh, N.C., and Boise.

Hahn said plans are to develop programs for Oregon that will use some of the innovations they brought back. They will implement a food drive this fall in hopes of gathering 55,000 pounds of food, 1 pound for everyone in Corvallis. Also in the works is a hunger awareness curriculum for middle schools.

"We are going to use things that have been tried successfully in other places and try them here," Hahn said.

The tour was part of Campbell Soup's "Let's Can Hunger" challenge and OSU's effort earned it a first-place award from the company, with a $3,000 prize. The group will also be featured in a Campbell's Soup print ad, according to Hahn.

In Albany, the students stopped at St. Mary's Soup Kitchen on Wednesday, and planned to go to Fish of Albany and the Helping Hands homeless shelter today. The group was also scheduled to visit Linn-Benton Food Share in Tangent today.

Sites will give the students an overview of programs and tours of facilities. To get a hands-on feel for what takes place, the students will volunteer at most of the facilities.

Students joining Hahn in Albany are Alexa Carey of Gold Beach, Andrea White of Corona, Calif., Dale McCauley of Aurora, Jennifer Villalobos of Molalla, and Stephen Hodges of Lake Oswego.