Flower of Life

A collaborative effort to reduce food waste on campus creates connections throughout the Lafayette-Oxford-University community.

Written by Emily Welly  |  Photos by Joe Worthem

When the Ole Miss campus comes back to life as students return in August, so does the Flower of Life Food Rescue Project, a collaboration between students and the Oxford Community Market that benefits the Oxford-Lafayette community.

Flower of Life started in 2020. Ole Miss classes were forced online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and freshman student Jackson McArthur was bored. He began looking for volunteer opportunities and after some research learned food waste is a persistent issue. He started making calls to see if there was a way he could help make a dent in the problem in Oxford. He found his solution when he talked to Betsy Chapman who heads up the Oxford Community Market.

Coincidentally, Chapman had recently learned from her friend Zach Tillotson, who was a chef at Alpha Omicron Pi sorority, that food waste was an issue for the Greek houses on campus. Large meals of very good, high-quality food were prepared for residents, but leftovers were abundant.

“It was a wonderful coincidence. I just happened to call at the right time. Our brains kind of converged on that,” McArthur said.

Not only did Chapman have that initial connection but she also knew the communities facing food insecurity because OXCM had already been delivering produce from the market there.

“That’s another huge thing too,” McArthur said. “You can have all the food you want but if you don’t know where to take it, what’s the point?”

They started with Canterbury Crest retirement home. On folding tables set up under a pop-up tent outside, a small group of volunteers including McArthur and Chapman organized leftover food from that one sorority house into to-go boxes donated by local restaurants. Then they distributed the boxed meals to residents. The OXCM Flower of Life Food Rescue Project was born.

Word got out. McArthur and Chapman gathered more student volunteers, community members, market staff and Greek houses to participate.

Today, established community and campus partnerships enable food preparation on a larger scale and delivery to four neighborhoods each week during the school year: retirement homes Canterbury Crest and Walnut Hills along with the C.B. Webb and Wayne Johnson neighborhoods, which are part of the Oxford Housing Authority.

Flower of Life’s GroupMe (OXCM Flower of Life Volunteer Squad) has more than 600 members from different organizations that show up to pack and distribute food.

Notably, the UM Center for Community Engagement has partnered with Flower of Life to provide two student leaders through the university’s Bonner Leaders Program, which places students in paid internships with community partners. That’s important because it means this grassroots volunteer project now essentially has reliable paid staff.

The premise hasn’t changed; it’s just executed on a bigger scale. Here’s how it works now: On Fridays, volunteers pick up pans of leftover food from Greek houses. Typically, that food includes main dishes, sides, breads and desserts.

The food is transported to the Oxford University United Methodist Church kitchen, where student volunteers mix and match items to create complete boxed meals. The university’s Department of Sustainability donates the containers. The UM Center for Community Engagement provides vans used for picking up the leftover food and delivering the freshly made food containers.

Additionally, neighbors in the communities being served function as liaisons to help get word out and to help get food to the right people when they need it most.

Take C.B. Webb resident Verna Stokes, for example. Stokes takes care of passing out food to her neighbors after it’s delivered by Flower of Life volunteers.

“She’s been with us since beginning,” McArthur said. “She’s just a superstar.”

Also paying it forward, one neighborhood that receives food is known for taking any extra meals to the veteran’s home or their church.

McArthur and Chapman estimate they serve 300 to 400 plates per week.

“The food is delicious, restaurant-quality food,” Chapman said, reiterating that the residents receiving the meals are not the only beneficiaries of the program.

“The most beautiful thing about it is the connections between the students and the neighbors,” Chapman said. “Those relationships have just grown over time. Students come to participate not just one time. Some come every week for their entire four years.”

McArthur has been involved for six years. Now in law school at Ole Miss, he is not the student leader (he passed the torch to Elizabeth Basha, who has since graduated and passed it to others), but he is still a regular volunteer.

In addition to food rescue efforts, through the years, Flower of Life volunteers have dabbled in other types of outreach. They built community gardens at C.B. Webb. They started an educational “grow club” for kids in the community to participate in when they got home from school. They built relationships with those kids and with adults in the communities, too.

“We got to know them really well,” McArthur said. “It was a really beautiful thing to see.”

According to Chapman, the chefs from the Greek houses are also supportive and accommodating because they are thankful for the plan for their leftover food. And OXCM gets to continue to deepen its outreach Oxford neighborhoods.

“It’s a win-win-win,” she said. “The goodwill just trickles throughout the community.”

Get Involved

Join OXCM Flower of Life Volunteer Squad on GroupMe to find opportunities to get involved in food distribution and more.

Shop Local at OXCM

Oxford Community Market is open every Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Old Armory Pavilion. Follow the market on Instagram @oxcm for updates on vendors and upcoming special events.