UNLV students are sharing their food with the homeless

Jennifer Knight

Friday, April 18, 2003 | 3:34 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: April 19, 2003

As a child, Nichole Stinson went to sleep each night in a homeless shelter.

As a 20-year-old college student, she now sleeps in the dorms at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and visits the campus dining room each week so she can "pay it forward," she says.

Stinson, who spent some time as a child in a homeless shelter in San Diego, has made it a Friday ritual to go to the UNLV dining commons to help out.

Each week she joins an assembly line of about a dozen students who spend a few hours putting together bagged lunches for homeless people at a North Las Vegas shelter.

"It reminds me of how far I've come and where I am now," said Stinson, who is majoring in secondary education at UNLV. "I just took it for granted before. Now I find myself coming here every week."

The program is run by Meals on Wheels and uses student donations for funding. Instead of donating cash directly, though, students give away one meal of a prepaid weekly meal plan at UNLV. For every meal donated the program receives $1.80 to pay for a bagged lunch.

This year, the participation of students living on campus and donating through the program has provided 200 bagged lunches a week for the homeless. The program, in its second year of operation, runs for 16 weeks while school is in session.

"This semester we got more donations than we expected so we expanded the program," said Jennifer Peck, UNLV's assistant program coordinator for leadership development.

UNLV student Houston Osemwengie, 20, said although he is not able to donate money, the program gives him a chance to contribute to the community.

"I'm starving right now," Osemwengie said. "But just because students are broke doesn't mean we can't use our time to help out."

One fraternity sent over five people recently to form a peanut butter and jelly sandwich assembly line.

"My strategy is to do them by the sixes," said Stephan Novotny, 19, a sports injury management student who belongs to Sigma Alpha Mu. "We're really doing this because it's our basic philosophy to help out."

Stinson said programs like these are an education in themselves because they can prompt students to have experiences outside the course of their day-to-day lives.

"I was afraid the homeless people would be dirty and scary," Stinson said. "When I got there, they were dirty and scary looking, but I wasn't as afraid."