Agora Cafe gives out free fruit, care kits during exam season

Agora Cafe gave out free fruit to college students throughout the examination interval.

The scholar-run Agora Eats Cafe is situated within the Macmillan Constructing and is an reasonably priced, natural and vegetarian eatery.

The cafe began its free fruit initiative when it acquired a $27,500 grant from the Meals Safety Initiative (FSI) a pair months in the past. This was damaged down into $7,500 for tools and $20,000 for meals initiatives. Together with the free fruit program, this grant allowed the cafe to provide meals to its volunteers.

The free fruit program ran for the previous six weeks and was very profitable, in keeping with Cody Rector, the overall supervisor of Agora. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of Canada in Prince Edward Island earlier than coming to UBC, and mentioned he’s obsessed with meals and sustainable, reasonably priced consuming.

On the time of his interview with The Ubyssey, Rector mentioned that roughly 3,200 kilos of fruit had been given away, and that the cafe would proceed to provide it away till the top of examination season.

“The meals safety fund has given us this grant and this grant has been invaluable within the reopening of Agora and made an impression in 1000’s of scholars’ lives all through exams,” Rector mentioned.

Rector mentioned the free fruit initiative was primarily based on suggestions from the neighborhood.

“What we did was we simply polled the neighborhood and we had been like, ‘What would aid you, what would you want?’ And so they answered like ‘Free fruit could be superior.’ It is wholesome, it is fast to seize, it is handy.”

Volunteers at Agora have additionally been placing collectively care kits for college students throughout exams. These kits embody juice, instantaneous espresso, an apple and different snacks.

“It was mainly supposed that, in case you’re at residence finding out and also you had wanted to go away residence to go and get a meal, that this bag would get you thru one other three, 4 hours with out having to go and purchase a meal,” Rector mentioned.

The care kits had been additionally accessible at different places on campus comparable to Sprouts Cafe, one other student-run cafe.