The Bear Pantry at Berkeley is a food bank for student families with dependent children. It is registered with the UC Berkeley Office of Student Life and the ASUC. Please feel free to contact us with any questions. The Student Parent Association is a proud sponsor of this program.
To donate please click here.
Our Community
The Bear Pantry serves low-income UC Berkeley students with dependent children. These families live in family housing in the UC Village, at Smythe-Fernwall and off campus. These families may be headed by a single parent, a couple, by undergraduates or graduate students. The only requirement s for access to the resources of the Bear Pantry are that they have minor children living in their home and that they be receiving tuition assistance through the Financial Aid Office at UC Berkeley.
Students with children are particularly vulnerable to interruptions or delays in funding, and temporary shortages of food in the home, which might be manageable if difficult for an independent student, can be an emergency for students with children to be fed. Situations such as this can force a student parent, after overcoming the challenges of being admitted to UC Berkeley, to consider abandoning their educational goals for the security of their children. The Bear Pantry was founded on the belief that this is a choice no parent should have to make.
Volunteer
The Bear Pantry is powered solely by the work of volunteers from the UC Berkeley community and its supporters. Volunteers assist with collections, distribution, fundraising, and administrative tasks. Please contact us for more information on volunteering.
Your donations to the Bear Pantry help us to provide nutritious food and to purchase food vouchers for perishable food items such as dairy and produce. Donations also go toward storage supplies, and to offset costs of transportation relating to collections The Bear Pantry is non-profit. All donations go directly to food and program costs. Donations are tax-deductable.
Contact
Email : thebearpantry@berkeley.edu
Address : The Bear Pantry at Berkeley
100 Cesar Chavez Student Center
Berkeley, CA 94720-4260