Three Hastings College seniors and LocalGlobal, a student group, received the Judy Sandeen award on April 17. The award honoree, Judy Sandeen, retired from director of the campus health center in 2007 after 29 years of service at Hastings College.
Mandy Amberg, Jordan Graviette, Savanna Rosenbaum and LocalGlobal received the award for the work they have done on campus, in the broader community for service to the hungry and the homeless and their advocacy work.
The seniors worked for others while also pursuing their studies. Amberg will attend dental school at the University of Nebraska Medical School, Graviette has accepted a teaching job in Omaha and Rosenbaum will attend the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Rocky Vista University, Colorado.
The three seniors had been members of LocalGlobal for all four years of their college careers. They grew and expanded the work of the group to include Habitat for Humanity, larger community events for the Hastings College Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week and partnered with the Crimson Cupboard Food Pantry on food drives.
Under their leadership, participation in the planning group also grew. For the four past four years, Hearts and Hands Against Hunger of Hastings noted that the group had packed 340,000 meals for those in need.
LocalGlobal students also routinely volunteer to work with the Open Harvest Mobile Food Pantry sponsored by First Methodist Church and First Presbyterian Church in Hastings.
The group also partnered with the Open Table to make sack lunches for the local community, which gets distributed to Catholic Social Services. In 2018, the group made 3,000 sack lunches.
Hastings College is a private, four-year institution located in Hastings, Nebraska, that focuses on student academic and extracurricular achievement. Hastings College has been named among “Great Schools, Great Prices” by U.S. News & World Report and a “Best in the Midwest” by The Princeton Review. For more, go to hastings.edu.
