A Campus Kitchen is an on-campus student service program that is a member of the nonprofit organization, The Campus Kitchens Project. At a Campus Kitchen, students use on-campus kitchen space and donated food from their cafeterias to prepare and deliver nourishing meals to their communities.
The organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C. on the campus of Gonzaga College High School. There are currently 25 Campus Kitchens, located in Saint Louis, Missouri; Greater Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Spokane, Washington; Mankato, Minnesota; Washington, D.C.; Lexington, Virginia; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Kearney, Nebraska; Williamsburg, Virginia; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and more (see full list of Campus Kitchens below). A previous Campus Kitchen at Dillard University in New Orleans, LA is on hiatus due to the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
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The Campus Kitchens Project was developed in 2001 as a national outgrowth of DC Central Kitchen, a successful local community kitchen model in Washington DC. The way it happened was kind of a marriage of two concepts.
In 1989, Robert Egger, founder and CEO of DC Central Kitchen, pioneered the idea of recycling food from around Washington DC and using it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop valuable work skills. DCCK became a national model, and as the idea grew, Robert was looking for a way to engage schools in the effort. He piloted a job training program with the American School Food Service, he regularly engaged high school and college students as volunteers at DCCK, and he spoke at universities all over the country.
In 1999, two Wake Forest University students, Jessica Shortall and Karen Borchert, created a small student organization called Homerun that engaged students in cooking and delivering dinners to folks in the community. What started as a hobby instead became a successful campus organization.
In 2001, the two concepts came together, and with a start-up grant from the Sodexo Foundation, The Campus Kitchens Project piloted its first program at Saint Louis University in Missouri.