The donation bin looks like a Frigidaire refrigerator. And in the lobby of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Nursing, it is a physical reminder for nursing students to collect food for RVA Community Fridges.

“We want to try to motivate people to do what they can,” senior nursing student Samuel Cupper said. “We came up with the project to help make a positive impact on the community.”

Cupper is working on the project with fellow seniors Katie Nickels and Thomas Taylor Green as part of the Joanne and William Conway Nursing Scholarship. All three students are in VCU’s accelerated nursing program.

The students designed the project as part of their fellows program with the School of Nursing’s Langston Center for Innovation in Quality and Safety. They chose RVA Community Fridges because its 14 locations around town, which are free to the public and offer both cold and dry storage, help combat food insecurity in the region.

“Our goal is to do weekly dropoffs,” Cupper said. “I have successfully made a donation to the community fridge in Church Hill with several canned goods and some ramen.”

The service project is set up to be a student-directed effort “to give back in some way to our community,” said Joe DeRanieri, D.M., director of the Langston Center. “This was something important to them. We want them to feel like the project is something they are vested in. That is what makes it unique. It’s what’s important to the students – not so much what’s important to the faculty or the course.”

Cupper, Nickels and Green were interested in a project related to community health when they learned about RVA Community Fridges.

In order to best serve our patients, we must also acknowledge the needs of our community. This project ties into the nurse’s responsibility to address social determinants of health and a responsibility to provide community-based care.

Katie Nickels

“They are an incredible 501(c)(3) organization that combats food and other resource insecurity by tapping into grass-roots initiatives and providing 14 publicly accessible free food fridges around Richmond,” Nickels said. “We felt this was a great opportunity to work with such an impactful organization and not only educate our peers within the School of Nursing about these public fridges, but also hopefully contribute some resources to them over the next few months.”

As nurses, Nickels and her project partners emphasize the role that community health plays in the health of individuals.

“In order to best serve our patients, we must also acknowledge the needs of our community,” she said. “This project ties into the nurse’s responsibility to address social determinants of health and a responsibility to provide community-based care.”

This project directly ties into the holistic care that nursing emphasizes, said Green who has a longstanding passion for sustainability and food justice.

“Nurses can’t just treat symptoms. We also need to advocate for healthier living conditions outside the hospital,” he said.

Nickels said she, Cupper and Green encourage students to foster awareness about the food drive and “the impact these contributions can have in ensuring we are caring for our community.”

“We would like to deliver food each week of the semester,” Cupper added. “We are hoping people will be generous.”

For the three leaders, their RVA Community Fridges project goes beyond helping feed the community.  They also want to share a lasting lesson with their fellow nursing students.

“I hope our project educates our peers about the importance of such organizations and the importance of assessing for food insecurity when providing care,” Nickels said.

“We’re also hoping to get the nursing school community involved enough for this to become a permanent structure within our school,” Green said.