Photo by Kendall Bulkiewicz | The Crow’s Nest
By Jenna Nicastro
Clubs on the USF St. Petersburg campus are giving back to the community this holiday season.
The Bulls that Serve Club is a volunteer-based group that encourages students to help the community. Its mission is to spread awareness about local issues and to promote change in St. Petersburg.
The club regularly does volunteer work, according to the president of the club Stacy Francois, and this year plans on doing a food drive for Thanksgiving.
Its volunteer work is essential this holiday season because of the impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which is why Francois notes that in result of the storms, they will be writing notes for those impacted by the storms.
Another club on campus spearheading volunteer work is the Food Recovery Club. This club is a chapter of the National Food Recovery Network and devotes it’s time to lessening food waste and spreading awareness about homelessness in the community.
This club regularly partners with the dining hall to provide leftover food to a local organization three times a week, called Hope Kitchen.
Sarah Percy, the Food Recovery Club’s president, said the partnership started in the spring semester of 2024, however its success has unfortunately declined in recent months.
“I’m sure the recent hurricanes and switching of food distributors has something to do with it as of recently,” Percy said. “But, I have no clue why they suddenly stopped providing food for us.”
Nevertheless, Percy kept her faith in The Nest’s staff and said that she was hopeful that a new food distributor and a fresh start would help progress their waste reduction efforts.
The Food Recovery Club also spends their Saturday mornings working with Celebrate Outreach, an organization that prepares over 120 meals every weekend to serve to the homeless population in St. Petersburg.
As for the club’s plans for Thanksgiving, Percy noted that the club is partnering with Hope Kitchen to provide dinners for the community and recently joined the Hope Kitchen’s hurricane relief efforts by preparing fish and care packages for those who needed resources after the hurricanes.
Both clubs engage in similar community-focused charitable work year-round. Their spirited efforts to ensure that people of the St. Petersburg community can enjoy a safe and comfortable holiday season are a true reflection of their commitment to public service.
