CSU approves over $300,000 to fund two free dinner programs

The new Spinach Collective and Hive Free Dinner program will begin service this fall

NewsHannah Scott-Talib — Published September 19, 2025 0 minutes

The funding was pulled from the CSU’s Student Space, Accessible Education, and Legal Contingency (SSAELC) Fund, which finances large-scale projects by and for the student body. The SSAELC Fund currently holds $527,000 in funds for the academic year.

A motion was passed during the SCM to allocate $130,000 of this funding to Le Frigo Vert, to assist in its relocation and the acquisition of a new operational space in February 2026. 

“So many students rely on us in a time of skyrocketing costs and food insecurity,” said Hunter Cubitt-Cooke, a worker at Le Frigo Vert present at the RCM. “With our lease ending in February 2026 and tuition hikes adding pressure, we risk losing everything unless that responsibility [of receiving funding] is met.”

Le Frigo Vert will be relocating to a previously unused CSU-owned building on Bishop St., which the council will be transforming into a new student centre, under the Student Building project. 

For this new project, a separate motion was passed to approve the position of a project manager to oversee the creation and completion of the new Student Building. A total of $194,439 from the SSAELC Fund will be split between the maintenance of this position and the support of four different grassroots food organizations at Concordia. 

CultivAction will receive $29,000 of this funding to build new fencing surrounding their crops to protect them from wild animals. The Concordia Food Coalition will receive $30,000 for its Support Training Incubation Resources (STIR) program and farmers’ market. The STIR program aims to assist the start-up of new and emerging food programs. 

A new food initiative known as the Spinach Collective will also begin this fall. It will operate biweekly and aims to offer a minimum of 800 free meals in Fall 2025, with that number set to increase in Winter 2026, according to CSU sustainability coordinator Mia Kennedy.

“We have a lot of great services downtown for lunch and breakfast, but nothing really for dinnertime,” Kennedy said. “This is about filling [that] gap for students who have late classes, or at the library very late and don’t have anywhere to go. They would be able to have access to this really cool biweekly vegan and vegetarian dinner.” 

The Spinach Collective will receive $10,000 of the $194,439 in funding for the fall semester.

Equally, another free dinner initiative will begin operating this fall—the Hive Free Dinner program, an extension of the preexisting Hive Free Lunch program. As outlined by Kennedy during the meeting, this program will receive $50,894 in funding and will seek to offer free dinners to 26,000 students, as well as free groceries for 1,600 students. 

“Many of these [aforementioned] organizations have been supplying students with shoestring budgets and no financial security,” Kennedy said. “This is an opportunity for the council to use the SSAELC Fund to provide financial security to help them avoid burnout.”

Further council business 

During the RCM, four candidates were also appointed to the Concordia Council on Student Life (CCSL): Maria Oliveira, Lujain Kayal, Beatrice Doran and Zoe Erika-Okoye. 

Additionally, a motion to acknowledge October 2025 as National Disability Employment Awareness Month and organize a disability-focused craft fair was proposed by councillor Sarah Aspler, but did not pass.  

Councillor Anastasia Zorchinsky proposed two final motions regarding the CSU Campaigns Instagram account and the CSU 2025-2026 Handbook, respectively. 

Zorchinsky’s first motion pointed to @csu_campaigns on Instagram, stating that the account “promoted materials from groups associated with violent imagery, such as the Instagram giveaway post, tagging the account @Krime_1.” 

According to the motion, this tagged account “promotes imagery and merchandise that explicitly incites violence and glorifies terror, including but not limited to phrases such as ‘Death to the IDF.’”

The motion sought to have the individuals responsible for the @csu_campaigns Instagram account provide council with an explanation regarding the aforementioned post, in addition to including an amendment to the CSU’s standing regulations that would require all “external advocacy” from official CSU social media accounts to receive prior approval from council. 

The next motion stated that the recently published CSU 2025-2026 Handbook contains political content going “far beyond the scope of a student resource, instead functioning as a manifesto, spreading extremist values and content that promotes hostility and violence.” 

According to Zorchinsky’s motion, this violence includes “glorifying academic disruptions and blockades, encouraging the concealment of identity in protest actions [and] celebrating events such as protests where groups praise Hamas.”

Neither of the above two motions passed, with several councillors expressing that the motions lacked substance and evidence. The RCM adjourned at around 10:30 p.m.