News

11th Annual Hunger and Homelessness Auction Draws a Crowd and Raises Money to Fight Hunger and Homelessness in New Haven

The 11th Annual Hunger and Homelessness Auction was held on November 20 in Harkness Auditorium. A crowd of students and faculty was on hand to bid on the extensive list of items donated by local businesses, faculty, staff and students.

Students from Yale’s health professional schools (the School of Public Health, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and the Yale Physicians Associate School) worked together to put on the week-long series of events which culminated in the live auction. The proceeds of the auction (an as yet undetermined amount) will go to the following local organizations, which work to alleviate hunger and homelessness: Loaves and Fishes, Life Haven, Youth Continuum, New Haven Home Recovery, Community Health Care Van, St. Thomas More and Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. The 2002 auction raised $27,000 and the 2001 auction raised $30,000.

Items auctioned included, among other things, a meal for eight at Daiko with Dean Michael Merson and Dean Catherine Gilliss, a variety of cooking, music and sporting lessons, homemade foods and meals, services such as babysitting and manicures, and trips to far-flung and nearby locales.

Kaveh Khoshnood, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, was one of the guest auctioneers. EPH students Julie Hsieh, Brian Kim, Jessica Leung, Lindsey Myers, KaSandra Rogers, Diana Winston, Lucy Yang and Christina Yuan volunteered their services to make the auction a success.

In the week leading up to the auction, the health professional schools held a food drive and competed against one another to collect the most points’ worth of canned food. EPH won the competition handily, contributing 762 points’ worth of food. As a result of the food drive, the schools donated an entire truckload of food to the Connecticut Food Bank.

Relevant lectures, a flag football game, a stratified dinner and a silent auction also contributed to a week that was both fun and serious as it raised awareness of and combated hunger and homelessness in the New Haven area.

-Story by Christy Gordon with information from Brian Kim and Jessica Leung.