CoJMC student creates campaign for Lincoln Food Bank
Sunday, April 12, 2020 - 3:45pm
by Kaitlin Van Loon
Senior advertising and public relations student Jesse Esquivel had the opportunity to create a campaign for the Lincoln Food Bank catered towards students during the coronavirus pandemic.
Esquivel is an exec member on the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) team. PRSSA has a mentorship program where they pair students with a mentor each semester. One of Esquivel’s mentors is Tom White. White has served as a PRSSA mentor for almost 15 years and even has a PRSSA of Lincoln chapter award named after him— the "Tom White Dedication Award".
“I’ve been working with Tom throughout this quarantine experience," Esquivel said. "I’m 33 years old, so a non-traditional student, and he noticed I didn’t have a lot of internship experience, so he connected me with someone at the Lincoln Food Bank.”
Esquivel is no stranger to organizations like the Lincoln Food Bank, havingworked with the Huskers Helping Huskers pantry on campus for the last couple of years. The pantry is for students to pick up free food and hygiene items or to get help connecting to university and community resources related to food and shelter insecurity.
“One out of every three UNL students are food insecure and imagine now how many have lost their jobs,” Esquivel said.
This fact fueled the overarching goal of the campaign, which is to spread awareness of the Food Bank of Lincoln to students, as well as the services it provides and where to find that information.
“The biggest challenge I had in creating this campaign was that students are gone,” Esquivel said. “A lot of it involved reaching out to other organizations who also help students to share with their members through social media and email.”
Esquivel has completed his plans for the campaign and is excited for them to be put into play by the Lincoln Food Bank.
