Virginia Tech students donate unused dining dollars to those in need

BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ) - At Virginia Tech, a small group of students is donating leftover meal plans to those who need it most.

The students said they wanted to find a way to show the community how much they care before they head home for Thanksgiving.

Sophomore Musse Yimer and his friends are working to make sure people in the community have something to eat by encouraging their peers to donate their unused meal plans and dining dollars.

“What we’re doing is we’re asking people to do big GrubHub orders and we go pick it up for them and we get a picture of their Hokie passport that they sent us and we pick up all the orders and drop it off for them,” said Mary Waclawski, a sophomore at Virginia Tech.

Late last week, the students made a Facebook post calling for Hokies to donate unused meals and dining dollars.

“We’ve arranged with the manager of West End that he is going to order $6,000 worth of dining dollar money to donate chicken, sirloin, ribeye, pasta, vegetables - pretty much any dinner items for Thanksgiving to various shelters,” said Waclawski.

The students also delivered and donated over 400 meals to homeless shelters, food pantries, low-income neighborhoods and more.

“The numbers are still coming; there still Hokies that are trying to just give like all the dining dollars they have left,” said Yimer.

He said so many want to give because they have a lot of meals and dining dollars that rolled over from the spring semester.

“So we’re trying to re-purchase the dining dollars in a more meaningful way,” said Waclawski.

They plan to collect more food and deliver them until the end of the semester to anyone who needs it.

“You know this isn’t going to be like a one-time fluke,” said Yimer. “We are trying to make this every semester; it’s not part of our philanthropy, but you know we thought of this idea and you know we could carry it on to everything every semester at the end of the semester - just give back to our community before we go back home."

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