University of Alabama students celebrated the first week of donations for The Beat Auburn Beat Hunger food drive with a giant “Roll Tide” display made from 12,000 canned goods.
Beat Auburn Beat Hunger is an annual student-run food drive held during the seven weeks leading up to the Iron Bowl. The campaign brings together student, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the Tuscaloosa and Northport community to help fight food insecurity across West Alabama
To celebrate the first week of donations, organizers worked with UA’s College of Engineering to plan where each can would be placed to create the display inside the Student Center.
The cans collected for the display were picked up by the West Alabama Food Bank and will be distributed to people in need throughout the region.
“I think it really just shows you how impactful even just a small amount of donating or volunteering can impact the community,” Beat Auburn Beat Hunger’s Lauren Drake said. “Because I’ve had so many organizations and people just be like, hey, like I can help for 30 minutes or I can donate 30 cans and all of that together raised 12,000 cans.”
Created in 1994 by UA’s Center for Service and Leadership and the West Alabama Food Bank, Beat Auburn Beat Hunger puts Alabama in a friendly competition with Auburn University to see which school can collect the most food and monetary donations for its local food bank.
Since the competition began, Alabama and Auburn have combined to raise more than 11 million pounds of food for Alabamians in need.
Beat Auburn Beat Hunger will continue collecting donations until the Iron Bowl in November.
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