The Campus Kitchen Project has plans to expand the number of
Campus Kitchens due to a grant given by General Mills.

“We reached out to General Mills,” Jessica Jackson, co-director
of the Campus Kitchen Project said, “and got $450,000 over the next
three years to open and operate Campus Kitchens in cities that
General Mills does business.”

“Karen Borchert (co-director of the Campus Kitchen Project) was
out in Minneapolis,” Jackson said, “and they were able to meet with
General Mills and talk about the programming and they were really
interested.”

Jackson explained that all of the currently existing Campus
Kitchens will also benefit from this grant because the different
locations work with each other to improve; therefore, the more
locations, the more experiences from which to learn.

“It will help,” Jackson said, “because we are always fund
raising and it will help us to have more Campus Kitchens. We can
help improve the Campus Kitchen Project by having more open
communication with different Campus Kitchens.”

The plans for the new locations of the three Campus Kitchens to
open are not yet decided. “We would like to be more geographically
diverse. We are pretty Midwest right now,” Jackson said. There are
currently six locations, four in the Midwest and one in New Orleans
and another in Maryland.

Grants such as this one are not uncommon to the Campus Kitchens
Project. “[Campus Kitchen] started with a significant grant from
the Sodexho foundation,” Jackson said, “and they are our biggest
supporters; they work with five out of six of our Campus Kitchens,
SLU being the only one they don’t work with.”

Jackson said that the Campus Kitchen Project benefits from these
partnerships because of the nature of the corporations that help
out Campus Kitchen.

“We were excited to work with them because they work with the
same thing we do, nutrition . . . Because our philosophy is beyond
the meal, we like to go beyond the paycheck and work with the
nutritionist and get involved (in the corporation).”

The General Mills mission statement also expresses a need for
this kind of partnership. The mission statement reads, “Working
with communities to address societal needs with breakthrough ideas,
championship people and financial resources.”