As the weather gets chillier and the holidays approach, the spirit of community service on campus seems to strengthen. RHAmen Rush, the Residence Hall Association’s annual food drive, is one of the products of this season’s spirit of giving.

This fall, RHA collaborated with Kids Against Hunger to collect food for donations. In previous years, items were donated to the Cleveland Food Bank, but this year, they will also be donated to individual families.

“Families will have a whole meal packaged,” said Jennifer Rosen, the executive vice president of external communications for RHA. “We have lots of different cans of vegetables and things like that, other different foods like pasta in there, turkey vouchers and fresh foods.”

Over 400 food items were collected, which Rosen says is a great accomplishment in comparison to previous years. Food was collected in boxes that were placed in every residence hall on campus. The event spanned from Nov. 11 to Nov. 21.

This is the first year that RHA organized the event in collaboration with another student organization.

“We started talking in April about the possibility of a collaboration [with Kids Against Hunger], and it has come all the way to fruition,” said Rosen. “With a lot of student organizations, things fall through. I’m very impressed with the way that we’ve been able to work through this.”

“I really wanted to take it a step further this year and have this collaboration so that we could work with another organization, impact more people, impact more students on campus and impact more people in the city of Cleveland,” she added.

Rosen said that this year’s RHAmen’s Rush has allowed for a more tangible charitable impact on the families receiving the food. She hopes that the collaboration with Kids Against Hunger is something that can continue in the future.