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Students will be able to tackle hunger in Albuquerque this weekend at the football tailgate.
Student United Way will host “Stack the Tailgate,” a canned food drive event from 2 to 5 p.m. before UNM’s football match against New Mexico State University on Saturday night.
Sydney Sivils, president of Student United Way, said the organizers want students to bring canned goods to the tailgate to donate to the Roadrunner Food Bank.
“Roadrunner Food Bank is a food bank here in Albuquerque,” she said. “They accept donations from donors, and they then give it to people in need.”
According to a press release for the event, Student United Way was established earlier this year as the result of a collaborative effort between the United Way of Central New Mexico and students at UNM.
Sivils said the group organized the event because it wanted to get involved with students.
“Student United Way was looking for a way to get involved in the UNM community while still being able to give back to the Albuquerque community as a whole,” she said. “We figured the best way to do this was to get involved with something that students are really excited about and capture that excitement and use that to our advantage to help people in need.”
The organization will be providing incentives to get people to donate, Sivils said.
“The incentive we’re kind of working with is that if a student brings two cans of food or more, then they’ll be eligible to get a voucher for a meal on campus provided by Chartwell’s,” she said.
About 15 to 20 students are signed up to help at the event, Sivils said. She said people will be able to identify them by their banner and white shirts.
Sivils said the mission of Student United Way is “to advance the common good.”
“It’s less about helping one person at a time, and more about changing systems to help all of us,” she said. “When we are connected and interdependent and we function as a community, we all win.”
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Student United Way focuses on helping people gain an opportunity to have a good life, Sivils said. She said the three pillars for a good life that the organization assists people with are education, income and health.
“This event ties a lot to the income and health piece of that, where we’re giving families the means to support themselves,” she said.
Vice President Tony Patton said planning for “Stack the Tailgate” started about a month and a half ago.
“We kind of wanted to get a big event together to promote Student United Way and kind of get out there to student organizations,” he said. “We knew that the UNM and NMSU football game was coming up so we kind of wanted to come up with something that would be unique to that.”
Patton said that while groups such as Delta Sigma Pi helped promote the event, only members of Student United Way actually organized it.
Patton said he thinks participation in “Stack the Tailgate” is important because it raises awareness among students about the city’s hunger issue.
“As students I know we really can’t contribute all of our time because we’re so crunched for time,” he said. “A can of food is not that expensive but it can go a long way. So try to give back to the community in some way that’s achievable for all of us.”
Stack the Tailgate
UNM Football Stadium
Saturday, 2 to 5 p.m.
