Community Conversations are free events offered bi-monthly by The Cabot and our partners, Leading Ladies, to encourage discussion and promote social change on issues that matter to our community. Please join the conversation!

Our September Community Conversations, HUNGRY TO LEARN, is a documentary film that sheds light on the growing issue of food and shelter insecurity among college students, even those attending elite institutions. The cost of tuition is forcing many students of all ethnicities and socioeconomic status to choose between eating and learning.

A conversation to follow with Annie Ciaraldi, Assoc Dean of Student Affairs and Violence Prevention and the SPOC (Single Point of Contact) for Food and Housing Insecure Students at UMass Lowell, along with , Kathleen B. O’Neill, Ed.D., Director, Single Stop, Bunker Hill Community College and SPOC re: Food Insecurity and Homelessness.

Anne Ciaraladi, Assoc Dean of Student Affairs and Violence Prevention and the SPOC (Single Point of Contact) for Food and Housing Insecure Students at UMass Lowell

About Leading Ladies kNOw More program: kNOw MORE! is a watching, listening, and reading initiative started by Leading Ladies and focused on today’s social issues. We choose movies and plays to watch, podcasts to listen to, exhibits to view, and books to read, and then engage in discussions with expert moderators, with the aim to learn more about problems that affect people every day in our country; to encourage creative actions and thoughtful solutions; and to foster empathy.

HUNGRY TO LEARN introduces the faces behind an American crisis — college students so strapped to pay tuition that they don’t have enough money to eat or a place to live. A lack of food is just a symptom of a bigger problem, the American Dream of a college education slipping out of reach. It is the story of how colleges, once places for children of privilege, opened their doors to students of limited means but failed to provide enough financial aid to allow these new students to graduate without making painful choices. This documentary is not just about the devastating hunger crisis unfolding on American campuses, it is about what can — and should — be done about it.