Houston Community College (HCC) is one of the nation’s largest community college districts, educating more than 100,000 students each year. A new proactive innovation known as “food scholarships” has the potential to become a more effective approach to reducing food insecurity among community college students. Food scholarships aim to support students at risk of food insecurity before they are sidelined by it. Instead of providing cash, food scholarships provide food.
This report describes program implementation and impact of one of the nation’s first food scholarship programs: the Houston Food Scholarship (HFS), a partnership between Houston Community College and the Houston Food Bank. The food scholarship was first distributed in January 2018, and this report examines its early stages, as well as rigorously estimating impacts through spring 2019.