The Karma Closet hosts MP Sean Fraser
Guest Blog Post by: Jess Fagan, Grade 12 Student Volunteer, Northumberland Regional High School
The Karma Closet is a student-led initiative that has been serving 120-180 free lunches for the students since September 2023. We serve plant-based food, soups, and four hot dishes every day.
After hand-delivering letters to Central Nova MP Sean Fraser’s constituency office in support of a Canada-wide school food program, we invited him and his staff member Jennifer to come to Northumberland Regional High School on January 9 to visit The Karma Closet. We wanted to showcase our efforts to make food at our school sustainable, accessible, and stigma-free for everyone, at no cost to any students who want to enjoy a healthy, filling meal.
We wanted Sean to see the importance of both the preparation and clean-up process while we’re in the kitchen. Ten minutes before the lunch bell, our Karma Closet volunteers set out plates, bowls, utensils and set up the salad bar, soup, and our four hot foods stations.
Sean said he couldn’t believe that we offer this program every day, and still manage to clean everything up before our afternoon classes start. Our students love this program and are always so grateful to our volunteers for all their hard work.
Lots of students volunteer their time between classes at The Karma Closet. We work with Grade 11 Culinary Arts students and the Grade 11 Agriculture class who help us with the salad bar. Culinary Arts students prep and make the hot food while the Agriculture class provides us our greens and micro-greens for the salad bar. It truly is a community effort, and this is an ideal lunch for everybody, especially because students can line up in the hallway knowing they don’t have to pay for a safe place to eat a healthy meal at school.
At the end of their visit, Sean and Jennifer promised to keep in touch to help us with the Karma Closet’s future. On Monday, February 12th, Jennifer will be supporting us with federal grant processes to keep the Karma Closet going.