Eat Well, FeelGood

By Thomas Weaver
Article published March 22, 2007 in UVM's The View


The corridor through the ground floor of Billings has long led to hotbeds of student creative energy. From the Cynic offices, past WRUV’s studio where a bass beat inevitably thumps behind the sticker-plastered door, and on to the busy network of Student Government Association offices. Tuesday and Friday afternoons, that scene expands to include an unusual blend of the culinary arts and philanthropy when the student volunteers of the Feel Good organization plug in their trusty Foremans to grill cheese sandwiches.

It would be tough to find a more potent combination of thrift and social conscience, gustatory pleasure and sound nutrition than the four-dollar grilled cheese served up by the student volunteers of UVM’s Feel Good. Working with bread from Klinger’s Bakery and 25 pounds of Shelburne Farms' cheddar donated every week, the group gives all of its profit — $10,000 last semester alone — to The Hunger Project and Millennium Promise.

Apologies to the big guys at Sodexho and the little guys out in the trucks on University Place, but Feel Good is one of the best campus lunch deals going. This isn’t your white bread and Velveeta grilled cheese, but a sandwich with gourmet aspirations from the top-notch bread and cheese to a bevy of embellishments — your choice of garlic, salsa, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers and spinach. May we suggest the “Cheesus Loves Me”?

Feel Good is a national effort with roots at the University of Texas, where it was started by a circle of cross-country runners and their friends. In 2005, they began spreading the “ending world hunger one grilled cheese at a time” concept to other universities, and there are now 11 chapters nationwide — Columbia to Illinois to Colorado to UC-Santa Barbara. When UVM Feel Good VP Leah Grossman is asked why this particular method for fighting hunger, her eyes widen a little at the slow-pitch softball question. “Everyone loves grilled cheese,” she says. “It’s simple, delicious, students love it.”

In its philanthropy and educational efforts, Feel Good emphasizes a self-reliant, grassroots model of development — with high priority placed on the empowerment of women. That philosophy is explained at the organization's website: “We believe that conventional, top-down planning is not the answer; it is part of the problem. Top-down, service-delivery approaches are not only too inefficient and inflexible to make a dent in world hunger, they actually undermine the most important resource — the creativity and self-reliance of hungry people themselves.”

Illustrating the concept, UVM student Grossman suggests a variation on the familiar “Give a man a fish or teach a man to fish” wisdom. “These people know how to fish, but the lake is dry or it is surrounded with barbed wire,” she says. “One of the most important things we can do is help remove obstacles that keep people from being able to help themselves.”

With an old-school marketing approach heavily invested in sidewalk chalk, UVM Feel Good has built itself into the leading fundraising chapter in the organization. The Vermont students typically sell in the neighborhood of 100 sandwiches each day during the two afternoons a week they’re open for business in the Billings basement, Feel Good President Taryn Ross says. They also set up at special events, such as SpringFest or February’s Transgender Identity Conference on campus.

Next fall, Feel Good members will move into the Davis Center, where they’ll set up their sandwich-making assembly line in 81 square-feet of deli/kiosk space. It will be a tight squeeze, but the students are used to doing great works with humble things. Archimedes can keep his lever; give these UVM students a Foreman and they can move the world.

To read the article online go to: http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/theview/article.php?id=2296