The food pantry is open every weekday from 10am to 2pm. On average around 30 students a day visit the pantry where they can choose five items per week from the shelves including pasta, rice, tinned goods, cereal and bread.
Sarah Jones, student life manager at the University of Bradford, said: “The plan is to cater for as many students as need it and keep the pantry running indefinitely.”
The food pantry is funded through the university’s hardship fund budget, with supermarket deliveries every week. In just its first ten days, the Student Life team helped 262 students.
Vice chancellor Shirley Congdon added: “It saddens me that students, like many other people at the moment, are in need of such support. We are doing everything we can to introduce new ways of supporting students during this period of financial crisis targeted at those who need the most help and find themselves in very difficult situations.
"The food pantry is one example of an intervention that also helps us to direct students to other areas of support. Student support initiatives work best when they are integrated and this one certainly is.”