Food Apertheid and Trisha Bhujle's Social Impact Journey
When I first encountered Karen Washington’s “food apartheid,” my understanding of the root causes of hunger and poverty began to fully take shape. Food availability, I realized, is just a fraction of the issue: Inequities in access and agency begin on the farm and extend to the plate. Since reading Washington’s works, I have grown increasingly convinced that systemic barriers and power imbalances enable hunger in a world of plenty. Those same forces shape reality on college campuses – a microcosm of hunger and poverty nationwide, and where I first began to advocate for reform in a broken agrifood system.
I spent most of college working at Anabel’s Grocery, a nonprofit grocery store run by ~50 students who bring fresh, affordable, and nutritious food to our campus community. Conventional grocery stores in our college town are too far or too expensive for most students to reach, and Anabel’s is an accessible alternative. Over the years, I built relationships with local farmers, bakers, and other food producers who often struggle to access conventional food markets. I was equally fortunate to connect with student shoppers, many of whom shared that they could no longer even afford bread at our town’s grocery store because its price had nearly doubled. Today, Anabel’s invests $60k+ in local vendors each semester and serves 600+ students each week. Seeing the relief on customers’ faces as they saw our shelves lined with affordable local sourdough and Honeycrisp apples motivated my interest in furthering a socially just and environmentally sound food system beyond our small store.
Social impact lies at the heart of Anabel’s mission, and two projects were particularly exciting to lead. The first is the Free Food Fridge (or “Freedge”), which we launched in October 2024 during my Fellowship in response to tenable data suggesting that both food insecurity and food waste were widespread on campus. Encouraging the community to donate excess food from cafés or events to our fridge, and promoting donated items through a campus-wide messaging platform for free food, led Freedge’s popularity to quickly explode. The many trays of bagels, salads, scrambled eggs, and potatoes delivered by student organizations, staff, and athletic teams consistently disappeared within minutes because of the sizable community of students who relied on them. To date, the Freedge is estimated to have recovered over 2500 free meals that would have otherwise gone to waste.
We launched a second project after my Fellowship ended: offering lower-cost groceries to students in financial need during the government shutdown. As the only vendor on our campus to accept SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Anabel’s developed a solidarity campaign during a time when the federal government halted funding for food assistance programs and other essential social services on which many students rely. Through our campaign, students with or without SNAP could request a 50% discount on their groceries if they experienced financial hardship of any kind, or donate $1 to the store to help reconcile the cost of the discount for their peers. Within a month, we had subsidized over $1200 of groceries across 200+ orders. The incentive to give was greater: 450+ customers donated a dollar or more to the store with their purchase, and a pool of community members donated over $3000 to bolster our efforts. Seeing university leadership, institutional stakeholders, and campus partners advocate for students was especially awe-inspiring during a time of great financial uncertainty. One college on our campus complemented our efforts by launching a basic needs center with hygiene products and pantry staples that has persisted into the present.
To see our seemingly small ideas grow into two university-wide movements remains the highlight of my undergraduate experience, and a driving reason why I continue to work in social impact. Since graduating in May, I’ve furthered my food systems work in Nairobi, Kenya, as a Princeton in Africa Fellow at Enveritas. Our team visits smallholder coffee and cocoa farmers around the world to assess their environmental, economic, and social practices. We then determine where gaps exist, so that global coffee roasters and chocolate companies can support farmers in filling those gaps. MCN’s emphasis on advancing the Sustainable Development Goals remains at the forefront of my role as we investigate agricultural challenges starting – but not ending – with small farmers.
I am always happy to connect with current Millennium Fellows and alumni across the pond, so please feel free to reach out anytime – I would love to e-meet you!
Article Written by Trisha Bhujle, Millennium Fellowship Alumni
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