Some places in West Virginia lack access to fresh meat and vegetables, forcing them to buy more processed foods, a Marshall University instructor said yesterday.

INTO instructor Lindsay Anderson has been teaching a class about food insecurity, food deserts and the importance of becoming involved to solve these issues.

Anderson and her INTO class went to Facing Hunger Foodbank Tuesday to package and box meat that will be sent out to seventeen counties in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, Anderson said.

Anderson said she hopes to not only teach her students about this subject but to help them be more comfortable within the Huntington community.

“I feel really good about getting students out there, because they really want to, but they don’t know how, or some of them are really afraid of being judged for what they [others] perceive as being ‘low English proficiency,’” Anderson said.

Volunteering with the food bank has helped the students to build confidence and gain direction in ways that they can help others, Anderson said.

“I like volunteering, but I was afraid to go alone, especially without an American person,” said Nouran Mohammed, a graduate student in the INTO program. “So, volunteering with the class has helped me out a lot.”

The class assignment has allowed Mohammed, and the other students, to be more involved and confident within in the community, Mohammed said.

“I will probably go alone next time, since I’ve been there and now know the people,” Mohammed said.

Anderson said that she likes to push her students to do things within the community because she has a “driven” group.

“I thought it would be really nice to do something meaningful with this class,” Anderson said, when explaining why she chose to have her students volunteer at the food bank.

The students will not only continue working locally with the food bank but also plan to join its mobile food pantry, Anderson said. They will also host a bake sale for another organization, she said.

“The bake sale was totally the students’ idea,”Anderson said. “I just said that we were going to do a project to benefit Huntington City Mission, and they came up with the idea of the bake sale.”

The students realized that if they sold food for a good cause, rather than just asking for donations, they would be able to have a better opportunity to explain what their mission was, Mohammed said.

“They are dedicating a lot of their time out of class to get ready for the bake sale,” Anderson said. “They are a very dedicated group of students and are always willing to go the extra mile.”

The group will hold its first bake sale in the lobby of the INTO center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Feb.11.

Tiara Brown can be contacted at [email protected].