One Saturday morning during the preliminary phase of Swipe Out Hunger, Rachel Sumekh recalled, she and Bryan needed to unload boxes of food from Covel Commons to the SAC food pantry. Since they only had two volunteers, Rachel and Bryan spent most of the day carrying the food to the pantry. Throughout this day, Rachel realized the impact the organization had on not only the UCLA community but also on all of Los Angeles.

Rachel realized, at this pivotal moment of exhaustion from lugging boxes of food in the June heat, that she wanted to be a leader within Swipes and see the organization reach its full potential on the UCLA campus. Her passion helped her to power through the opposition from naysayers instead of allowing the organization to buckle under pressure from Dining services. Rachel and Bryan reached out to friends and associates in University Government and the UCLA Volunteer Center, who supported similar goals in terms of helping the food-insecure communities at UCLA and in the greater L.A. area. Rachel’s drive and dedication proved successful when she and the Swipes team handed out their 75,384th meal by the end of 2011, less than two years after the group’s founding.

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