Finnane is president of FoodShare, a 50-member student organization that helps fight hunger in the community by collecting surplus dining hall food and transporting it to local relief shelters.
At 7:15 p.m. every evening, small teams of FoodShare members visit the two campus dining halls and pick up trays of food that were prepared in the kitchen but went unserved because of the near impossibility of matching supply to student demand (no food is collected off plates). Using university vans, they transport the food to the South Bend Center for the Homeless and the Hope Rescue Mission.
An average night's collection consists of 150 to 350 servings of entrees, casseroles, chicken or fish per dining hall. The shelters serve the donated food to their residents the following day for lunch or dinner.
Before FoodShare was founded in 1988, surplus prepared food was thrown out at the end of the day.