February 19, 2019

More than 230 students, parents and their children lined up in the MU Student Center with cans in their hands, waiting until they could make their own stuffed animals.

Those in line chose between tigers, turtles, bears and more.

The Campus Activities Programming Board hosted the Caring Bearing Sharing event on Monday. This event has been a fundraiser for Tiger Pantry since 2014. Participants had to bring five cans of food, donate one meal swipe or donate $5 to the Tiger Pantry to make a stuffed animal.

CAPB ordered 200 animals and ran out before the end of the event. According to junior and CAPB member Joseph Schellhase, the organization plans to choose a larger space and order more supplies next year.

“It’s important to support Tiger Pantry because there are some people who don’t have as much money as some of us do here,” senior Kathleen Matz, a member of CAPB, said. “It’s great to be able to provide them with food that they can’t afford themselves. It’s a really important organization to have on campus and it also allows students to be giving and help others out.”

Kathy Smiley is a parent in Columbia who brought her two children to this event.

“Even people that we don’t know need help,” she said. “It’s just caring about everybody, caring about people you don’t know by taking the time to come here and donate food.”

Junior Hannah Jiang said she had about 70 extra swipes left at the end of last semester.

“I know that some students on campus have food problems,” Jiang said. “Last term I had a lot of swipes left. One of my friends asked me to share some of my meals with him because he was having some financial problems to get food from campus, so I know that Tiger Pantry is necessary for students.”

Sophomore Kaitlin Rohlfing attended the event for the second time and appreciates that Tiger Pantry allows meal swipe donations in addition to canned goods.

“I don’t use a lot of my swipes, so I’m always left with 10 or 20 [swipes] at the end of the semester,” Rohlfing said. “The fact that they take swipes helps the students because they don’t have leftover swipes and it helps the community because those unused swipes are used for people who don’t have the opportunity to get food.”

_Edited by Emily Wolf | ewolf@themaneater.com_

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