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Senior Suparaja Sridhar has brought humanitarianism to UAB to benefit the student body on a number of levels. She started the organization “Donor to Diner” to help those students that struggle to pay for food. The goal of the meal donation program is to decrease student food insecurity at UAB and put unused meal plans to good use.

UAB freshmen who live on campus are required to purchase one of two large meal plans, which often goes to waste when students do not need all the food that they have to purchase. This is where Donor to Diner comes into play. Students can donate meal swipes at the register of The Commons, and this will translate into a meal voucher that other students can use. In addition, there is an ongoing campus food pantry that students can donate to, as well as a local Donor to Diner chapter.   

Sridhar is a Birmingham native who came to UAB from the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate program. She is majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Spanish. According to Sridhar, “The rampant idea that college students should be living off of Ramen noodles can be detrimental. Students mistake food insecurity as a part of the college experience, and do not realize that there are ways to get help. Our organization works to increase awareness of the problem as well as collect supplies. We started in 2013 and we have now collected close to 1000 meals.”

“We all knows what it feels like - a single meal may not feel like a lot to you or me, but to those who don’t have it, one meal can be the difference between a college graduate and a college dropout,” Sridhar said. “That’s why we have this One Meal Initiative, because we have staff members and students that donate one meal and it goes a long way.”

Donor to Diner has been featured on several occasions, including the UAB TedX talk, WBRC Fox 6 News and the Hoover Sun News. The prevalence of this issue actually spans America, with individual schools releasing reports of food insecurity at high rates ­– 59 percent of students at Western Oregon University, 35 percent of students at University of California at San Diego and 21 percent at the University of Manoa in Hawaii.

Sridhar has had a lot of help and encouragement along the way from Sodexo representatives and a few students on campus that made organization status possible for Donor to Diner. This includes the current Vice President, Tanner Earley and a few others on the executive board- Dana Pham-Hua and Matt Holderfield. In addition to these student advocates, the former Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs, Caroline Farley, Jamie Grimes and Melissa Taylor all helped Donor to Diner become what it is today.

This year, Tanner Earley will be taking over as president. Earley became involved with the project early on. “Last year, I transferred from a junior college and I had no idea that food insecurity was such a problem at UAB and across the country. Once I volunteered I realized that I really wanted to be a member of this organization and help in any way that I could.Next year, I am hoping to try to get more organizations involved with D2D, such as the athletic department. I also plan to continue to have our ‘One Meal Initiative’ twice during the school year.”

“I think it’s important to help people in our backyard, and I don’t think we should spend all our funds in one place or another,” Sridhar said. “We can’t trivialize a college student’s experience but we also can’t compare them to third world countries. A lot of time things are based on who is able to capture attention. We need to help everyone we can possibly help. It’ll naturally work itself out.”