The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank came to Cerritos College and were able to give 350 students bags of free food.

With the help of faculty, staff and students massive lines came to gather free food where many were able to walk away with two bags of food on Tuesday from 11 a.m to 1 p.m.

The project was started off last month at the end of the Fall semester during finals.

During the December’s two day project to hand out massive amounts of free food, 450 students turned out to receive soft lunches.

That was the main difference between Tuesday’s event and December’s is that there was more traffic this time around due to the lack of finals, says Kimberly Westby, M.S, dean of student support services.

There was no need for a need for a student ID, just a name so those helping can keep track of the amount of people coming by to get soft lunches.

Senator Prottyuth “Chapal” Barua helped out along side the Associated Student of Cerritos College President Karen Patron to hand out bags to students as they signed their name.

“I saw that they did this in December,” she said, “and I was like ‘I want to get involve’ so I asked Karen [Patron] if there was any voluntarily opportunities.”

Barua went on to talk about the success that she saw first hand.

“So many students signed up that we didn’t have any more sign-up sheets, we ended up going back and printing more out. From our booth [alone] over 100 students came.

“We ran out of bags, we couldn’t continue to give the students two bags, we had to give them one. We even ran out of those as well and we had go to the book and get the plastic [bags.]”

Financial Aid Technician Michael Gonzalez said that this was a collaboration effort.

The food bank itself was the agency who provided the food and they in the financial aid office, members of ASCC and others helped them the food bank get the food to the students.

“I didn’t realize how many students were in need on this campus,” says Barua, “it’s something that’s unspoken of, homelessness, hungry those are topics that are not talked about. Just because you go to a community college and are able to afford classes doesn’t mean you’re able to afford the basic necessity.”

The next food bank will take place next week on Wednesday Jan. 24.

This event will take place twice a month on Feb. 20,28 and March 20, 28.