What is FeelGood?
FeelGood is a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting hunger in the world through the sale of grilled cheese sandwiches.
There are currently 24 college campus delis where students volunteer their time to raise money to fight world hunger. Customers decide how much to pay for their sandwiches because it’s a donation.
The money raised from the sale of the sandwiches goes directly to The Hunger Project and CHOICE Humanitarian.
This comes straight from their website:
“There are more than one billion people in the world who, because they lack a voice, can’t get enough food to remain alive. There’s just no way to feel good about that fact unless you get busy to change it. So we are.”
FeelGood
With those words, FeelGood was born.
Moved by the magnitude of chronic global hunger, Kristin Walter and her brother Jason started FeelGood in 2004 when they were students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Their concept was simple: offer students grilled cheese sandwiches in exchange for a donation, and give the money to organizations with a proven track record of eradicating global hunger.
In less than 6 months, they raised $10,000.
Since then, they have raised over $1.2 million!
Who are the students who run the delis?
One of them is Jamie, who has a website – Cheddar and Change – An Exploration of the Philanthrophy Behind a FeelGood Grilled Cheese. Jamie is a senior biology student at the University of Vermont.
She attended her first FeelGood meeting as a freshman 3 1/2 years ago and she worked her way from being a member to a deli manager and now she is the vice president of her chapter.
On her “About Me” page, she writes:
FeelGood has been near and dear to my heart since the first meeting I attended the first week of my freshman year. The innovative strategies that FeelGood and our partner organization, The Hunger Project, use to end hunger inspire me on a daily basis.
Over the past three and a half years, this organization has filled me with passion and optimism, love and compassion, happiness and confidence. It has etched in my mind a vision of a world free from hunger and shaped my goals for the future.
…At the deli, I am particularly intrigued by the way that conversation flip flops between dialogue about world hunger—what it means, how it intertwines with other social issues, and strategies to end it—and professions of love for bread and cheese.
