End the Cycle, a student organization at the University of Michigan working toward improving equity in Michigan schools, raised over $5,000 during the winter semester to completely pay off student lunch debt at Carpenter and Allen Elementary Schools in Ann Arbor.
End the Cycle was founded at the University in 2020 to address inequality in Ann Arbor schools, with the city being one of the most economically segregated in the nation. The organization provides virtual supplemental tutoring services to elementary students and organizes various committee projects.
LSA senior Rija Awan is the co-founder and current president of End the Cycle. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Awan said the organization was originally founded to address the impact of homelessness on students, though they have since expanded to helping underserved students from a greater variety of backgrounds.
“The original goal was to bridge the gap in educational disparity for students facing homelessness in Ann Arbor,” Awan said. “We’ve expanded to online tutoring for underserved students and then these committee projects … It’s a very community-engaged organization.”
End The Cycle has a committee centered around food insecurity, which is chaired by LSA sophomore Elizabeth White and led by LSA junior Zubaida Azeeza. In an interview with The Daily, Azeeza said they saw providing funds for school lunches as a step toward achieving educational equity within the district.
“We saw a TikTok, actually, about other schools paying off lunch debts and we thought that would be a great idea,” Azeeza said. “We know that food insecurity goes hand-in-hand with educational instability, and by making sure that a student has food, they’re less likely to drop out.”
Azeeza said she believes lunch debt can not only affect the students who cannot afford lunch, but can also lower the quality of educational resources at these schools if the school district has to cut into its budget to cover the accumulated debt.
“Students who aren’t part of the free and reduced lunch program can accumulate debt and the debt still has to be paid,” Azeeza said. “The school has to address it in some way, and that can cut into educational resources.”
White told The Daily people might not expect food insecurity to exist in Ann Arbor, the city with the highest number of households making over $200,000 annually in the state. Still, 16% of Ann Arbor Public Schools students rely on the federal free and reduced lunch program to eat at school and White said there are likely other low to mid-income students who don’t qualify for federal support, but struggle to pay for lunch.
“I think that there’s a misconception that because Ann Arbor is a relatively wealthy city and area, there isn’t food insecurity,” White said. “Because Ann Arbor is such a high-income city, the entire district doesn’t receive free lunch. Then those students who can’t afford it, but aren’t disadvantaged enough to receive federal aid, can’t even afford lunch, and that’s where the debt is really accumulating.”
White said they chose to fundraise for certain schools in part because of their proximity to the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti border, because while schools in Michigan cities with a higher number of low-income students might qualify for federal aid, the majority of schools in Ann Arbor do not. The median household income in Ypsilanti for a household in 2021 is $40,256 while Ann Arbor’s is nearly double, or $73,276.
“A lot of the schools that we’re targeting are on the border of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti,” White said. “Ypsilanti is a district that does qualify for federal aid for the whole district, so if you live in Ypsilanti and you go to school there, no matter how much money your family makes, you get free lunch, whereas in Ann Arbor, that’s not necessarily true.”
White said the committee decided to target elementary schools instead of middle or high schools because student lunch debt accumulates over a student’s K-12 academic career.
“(Lunch debt) adds up over a student’s life,” White said. “It follows you through middle school and into high school, so paying off debt in an elementary school can still end up reducing the debt of a high schooler.”
End The Cycle raised funds through a combination of grants, social media campaigns and sticker sales. Awan said the grants and awards helped the group raise awareness in the community, which brought in more individual donations.
“We knew that we needed support early on, and if we could get grants, then we can get a push towards the goal immediately,” Awan said. “We won the TEDxUofM grant, which was super big for us. … We got to speak on stage for that, and that allowed us to get a ton of awareness about the project, and we got lots of donations from that. We also won the U-M Medical School’s Galens Medical Society grant.”
LSA sophomore Archita Girmannagari was the lead of the TEDxUofM subteam that selected End the Cycle as the winner of the Award for Innovation, a $1,000 grant given annually to a U-M community member or organization. In an interview with The Daily, Girmannagari said the organization’s proposal stood out due to the direct short-term impact on the community, as well as the potential for long-term impact.
“One thing that I really liked about End the Cycle was that paying off the lunch debt would have a direct impact on the community within this year,” Girmannagari said. “We knew for a fact that our money would be going to a good cause … and secondly, the way that they phrased their plan was that making this impact now would only be a building block for their future plans.”
Receiving the TEDxUofM grant allowed the End the Cycle to talk about their mission with a larger audience. Girmannagari said members of the organization spoke at the TEDxUofM conference, which allowed attendees to learn about food insecurity in Ann Arbor and how they could help.
“(End the Cycle) actually were able to speak at our conference,” Girmannagari said. “A big part of this award is to raise awareness for that organization. It’s not only about the funds, it’s also about having the opportunity to share their ideas.”
Awan said the food insecurity committee intends to continue working with these schools to eliminate childhood food insecurity in Ann Arbor.
“We’re not done,” Awan said. “We know (the donation) is not addressing the root cause of food insecurity. … Some next steps would be establishing food pantries in (local) schools, and we want to work to create a database online where people can see the schools that need the most help in eliminating that lunch debt so that they can donate directly.”
Azeeza said she believes establishing food pantries in schools would have the biggest long-term impact, which is a project End the Cycle would like to pursue in the future.
“There are food banks in Ann Arbor, but it’s not as accessible as a food pantry located in the school,” Azeeza said. “It will help the families out tremendously. Children … can just go to the pantry, pick up the groceries, load them in their backpack and go home. It’s much more accessible than a food bank.”
By working with Ann Arbor Public School administrators and local organizations like Ozone House and Alpha House, Awan said she believes the work of the organization will go far.
“(The donation) is just the first step,” Awan said. “We’re super excited to keep this going for the next semester.”
Daily Staff Reporter Madison Hammond can be reached at madihamm@umich.edu.