He and parishioners at St. Albans, where he is the incumbent priest, were inspired to create some pilot projects on campus serving meals to students over the last few years. They began by serving meals at one of the student residences where students who didn’t have meal plans lived.

Throughout this past academic year, St. Albans teamed up with the student union, which has its own food insecurity initiative “Fed up.” They moved their program to a central hub area on the main campus and served three lunches and a dinner each semester. The meals were cooked by St. Albans’ parishioners with student volunteers on campus, and to encourage students to cook nutritious and low-cost meals for themselves, the team handed out recipes for the dishes they were serving.

Not surprisingly, the free meals have been a big hit with the students. Garner reports that they served a burrito dinner for their last meal of the semester in mid-April to 385 students. The students are grateful, and Garner says the volunteers often hear that the meal is the only one some students will eat that day.

Students have enjoyed the opportunities for social connections the meals create. Encouraged to sit down and eat and talk together, students offered feedback that the project has had a positive effect on their health. Aside from the food, they benefited from the social connections and a greater sense of belonging.

St. Albans volunteers also made efforts to take a break and sit down to eat and talk with students. Garner was pleased to hear that the students appreciated the opportunities to connect with the adults from the parish. Although, he expected that it would be most appealing to have student peers serving the food, feedback from the student union included comments that the students valued opportunities to have conversations with the adult volunteers from the parish. They appreciated having an adult ask how they were doing, how their day or semester was going, and the sense that these adults cared about them.

The St. Albans group has sought and welcomed partners from other parishes, denominations and faith groups to bolster their efforts in whatever capacity they can contribute. Even if a group can’t take on providing a whole meal, contributing to part of a meal is a valuable way to get involved and support the project. For example, Garner said, a number of United Churches got together and offered to donate dessert for the final meal of the term in April. Initially, they estimated they could provide about 150 servings. However, their bakers participated enthusiastically, and they ended up bringing more than 500 servings. “It was this overwhelming amount of food. That just created such joy…. It was great,” he recalled.

“My hope is next year to continue to cultivate relationships with churches and other groups who can provide supplemental things, like baking biscuits when we were doing soup and that sort of thing. I’m looking for all sorts of ways to lower the barrier to entry to churches and other groups,” he said, suggesting that sometimes people feel overwhelmed by a big problem like student food insecurity and feel that they can’t do anything. “I think the real power of this is that there are smaller ways to …come and be involved.”

Garner acknowledges that the meals can’t solve the problem of food insecurity on campus, but he was pleased to see that highlighting the problem and advocacy work seems to be spurring some action on the issue. The president of the university created an initiative to write an action plan for food security for the whole campus. Garner served on the committee with one of the deans in medicine and St. Albans was included as an external partner.

Pilot project aims to counter students’ social isolation

The Rev. Michael Garner has seen that students at the University of Ottawa, like many people in the broader society, have more communication tools at their fingertips than humans have ever had, but many are socially isolated. He says that loneliness is sometimes described as an epidemic in our digitally connected society where people need more time and real connection with other people in person.

Garner has worked closely with the U of O Student Union on issues of food insecurity, and one day ran into Meredith Kerr, the executive director, in Costco. “What are we going to do about loneliness on campus?” she asked him.

He says his first thought was “I have no idea.” But it was immediately followed by, “I know exactly what we are going to do.” Peg Herbert, a parishioner at St. Albans had come to mind.

“She’s a remarkable woman,” he said. Among the many cool things she has done is starting an organization called Chosen Grandma, which pairs retired women who don’t have grandchildren, or don’t have grandchildren in the city, with single moms, single parent families, creating this connectedness. The idea has caught on and Chosen Grandma has been featured on the CBC news. Garner noted that Herbert is developing this charity even though there are additional legal challenges because there are minors involved, but the point is to give children a “chosen grandma.” He realized that Herbert had all that valuable experience creating connections in a safe way.

So, while standing there in Costco, he thought, “‘We’ll just take Peg’s idea and apply it on campus.’ And that’s what we’re doing,” he told Perspective.

Room Enough is a pilot project will match 10 students with 10 families or households in the next academic year. “It’s really about facilitating the need of students, the desire of these households to connect … and support each other and learn from each other,’ he said. The pilot for this academic year will be a test run to see how this works, see what doesn’t work. They will track participants’ feedback on their mental health, the connection between the students and their matched households. “If we have a positive outcome and we have some data, we’ll go to the university to look at scaling it up for more people to participate in the next year.

The diocesan Future Fund awarded the project a grant of $10,000, which Garner says will help hire a student to be a part-time co-ordinator for the program.

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In 2024, the parish ran a pilot project serving a free meal once a month at the Friel student residence using funds left over from Open Table, a pre-pandemic ecumenical project, and a $5,000 grant from the Anglican Foundation. Last year, they served 12 meals at the residence, partnering with St. Bartholomew’s parish for two of them and with a couple of other groups for others. Each meal attracted about 250 students, and St. Albans heard very positive feedback.

The Rev. Michael Garner, incumbent at St. Albans, acknowledges that meals such as these don’t address the larger problem of student food insecurity, but the project was intended to raise awareness at the university and to build a sense of community. The meals served in the Friel residence last year encouraged students to sit down and eat together. “In the individual conversations I have with students, whether I’m serving at a meal or as a chaplain in a meeting, there’s a broad sense of loneliness. That’s societal, but it’s certainly on campus,” Garner said.

In that sense the meals were an outreach of pastoral care for students. “It’s a group of people saying we actually care about you guys, and you don’t have to do anything for us, but we’ll be here and we’re going to eat some food and care for you in tangible ways, but then if you want to have a conversation, you know, we’re here as well.”

Being at the residence every two weeks allowed the parish volunteers to get to know a lot of the students. Garner recounted how one of the St. Albans parishioners was volunteering as a greeter. While talking with one young man she asked why he kept looking over at a person sitting at a table alone. “I kind of want to ask her out,” he said. She encouraged him to just go sit with her and then saw that they spent the evening chatting. There were small moments like that, but Garner said they also helped a couple of students apply for Masters’ programs and other pragmatic things “because they got to know and trust us.”

Despite all the positive feedback, Garner said the university told him they didn’t have funding to help continue the program at the Friel residence this year.

The University of Ottawa Students’ Union, however, was keen to partner with St. Albans. I’ve been building relationships within the undergraduate student union. They run the food bank on campus, and we had done a food pantry [in the chaplaincy office] a couple years ago. so we had a link with them. Over time, I think our different activities on campus sort of gave us legitimacy with the student union….. So, we’ve pivoted this fall and we’re doing some pilots this year on the main campus.”

As a part of “Fed Up,” the union’s food security program, three or four student volunteers with work with some St. Albans congregation members. “We’re going to start cooking the meal together at 8 or 9 in the morning, and then serve a free lunch for students in an atrium area of the student union building.

Their first lunch was on Oct. 5. “I got a great deal on three massive induction friendly pots that each hold 24 quarts, and so we made 60 litres of red lentil soup with North African spices and paprika butter,” said Garner. Afterwards, the student volunteers will get the recipe and a gift card for a grocery store along with the encouragement: “You’ve made this recipe, now cook it for your friends and have a meal together.” So, it is both to empower them on how to cook nutritious, cheap food but also the importance of gathering together.”  On Nov. 5, they plan to cook vegetarian chili and then on Dec. 3, do another mean at Friel when St. Albans members and students can just eat together.

Garner says he has been struck by how keen the student union has been to promote St. Albans as their partner. “One of my theological convictions is if the church just expresses the fruits of the spirit — kindness and patience and gentleness and all of these traits— in the world, it becomes hugely attractive.” He added that some of the students who don’t attend the church have been recommending it to others. “’If you are looking for a church, you should try St. Albans.’ It was bizarre, and it was just lovely because they’re seeing us as people who care about students.”

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University of Ottawa students love the meal at Friel

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The Rev. Michael Garner, who is Incumbent at St. Albans as well a part of the multi-faith chaplaincy at the university, was inspired to start the project after learning that food insecurity is a common problem for university students, magnified by recent high levels of inflation. He learned that the campus food bank has very limited resources and often runs out of food. Although a meal once every two weeks isn’t the solution for student food insecurity on campus, it is a part of an effort to raise awareness about the issue, and it provides an opportunity for church groups to express care and concern for students and a social event to help students connect with one another.

Students at the Sept. 25 dinner expressed their appreciation and spoke about the struggle to make ends meet. “Sometimes I wonder if I should just eat the same thing over and over to save money,” one student told Perspective. “I’m lucky that I can ask my parents for help, but I don’t want to be asking them all the time,” she said, noting that spending $150 recently amounted to surprisingly few groceries that would not last through the month.

The project follows in the footsteps of an ecumenical program called Open Table that St. Albans used to participate in with United and Presbyterian churches to host meals on campus before the pandemic. Open Table has provided $12,000 from its remaining funds for this project, half of which is being used to pay a student co-ordinator, and the other half will help pay for food and supplies. The alumni association heard about the project and donated $2,000 for equipment such as bain-maries to keep food hot while it is being served.

St. Albans’ parishioners have prepared and served two meals so far. They are looking for other Anglican parishes, ecumenical and interfaith partners to participate in the program.

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