A food pantry is going mobile for the first time, bringing food to students in areas needed.

Students Helping Our Peers formed the Mobile Shop, which will be visiting the Schilletter-University Village Community Center on April 26, 2013.

“This will be the first time,” said Kirsten Mancosky, sophomore in pre-diet and exercise. “So it’s just kind of a kick-off and we’ll see how it goes.”

The event will hopefully turn into something bigger, Mancosky said. The event will be a test run to see if it is an interest to the community.

Andrew Doherty, junior in dietetics, explained why Students Helping Our Peers chose the SUV apartments.

“It kind of draws in families and non-traditional students,” Doherty said. “So we are going to target that area.”

Students Helping Our Peers is also partnering up with the Bookmobile that the Ames Public Library provides. Every Friday, the Bookmobile is set up at the UV Laundromat.

This provided the Mobile Shop another reason to bring it to SUV.

“It just gave us an easy location to put it instead of trying to figure out where we would want to go,” Mancosky said.

Students Helping Our Peers plans on collaborating with the Ames Public Library to combine a library with a pantry.

Originally Frederiksen Court was a contending location.

“The reason we didn’t pick Frederiksen Court was because they already have Hawthorn,” Mancosky said. “We figured SUV will probably utilize it better.”

Doherty explained the goal for Mobile Shop.

“I would say to reach people that don’t really get the chance to come into our set location in the Food Science Building,” Doherty said. “So we can go to them and get people that otherwise couldn’t make it onto campus.”

Students Helping Our Peers received more than 500 donations for the pantry from various organizations in the Greek Week competition.

“We are going to purchase a lot of the food just because we’re going to have a specific set of pre-assembled meals that we’re going to be handing out,” Doherty said.

The food pantry in the Food Science Building is located in room 2616. Members of the organization volunteer at the pantry to hand out meals to students.

Students Helping Our Peers is a volunteer organization; members are required to volunteer three hours to be a part of the organization.

“So this will give [volunteers] another opportunity in case they can’t get it during the normal Shop hours,” Mancosky said. “This will just give them another chance.”

The procedure at the Mobile Shop will be the same as the normal Shop. Students can come in, show their ID and receive a meal without record; keeping it anonymous.