About Us

Our Vision

We are committed to making UCI a basic needs-secure campus by fulfilling the basic needs of all students – which include food and housing security – a guaranteed right for every person.

Our Mission

The UCI Basic Needs Center supports student’s financial stability by ensuring equitable access to basic needs through student empowerment, community collaboration and institutional integration. We understand that meeting the basic needs of our students greatly impacts their mental and physical health, academic performance, work productivity, and holistic success. We are a home for all students, a collaborative space for innovative solutions, and an advocate for social justice and equity.

FRESH Basic Needs Hub to UCI Basic Needs Center

Starting in 2023, we’ve changed our name! Our new name reflects our evolution throughout the years and allows us to better communicate the work we’re doing in serving students’ needs in our permanent home. We now not only offer food resources, and have expanded in the past few years to add:

Emergency Housing

Transportation Support

Social Worker Consultations

Financial Wellness Programming

Diaper Support

FRESH stood for “Food and Resources Empowering Students with Hope” which was so important to the beginnings of our work. We have therefore decided to rename the pantry the “FRESH pantry” to honor the student advocacy that it took to create UCI’s first food pantry. While our name has changed to the UCI Basic Needs Center, our values and mission stay the same.

This film was created by UCI Alum and previous student staff member, Adrienne Santiago.

Want to know a bit about how we got here and where we are going?

Eight months in the making, ReFRESH My Memory is a documentary film about the evolution of the UCI Basic Needs Center at UC Irvine. Through the stories and media shared by UCI students, alumni, staff, and fellow supporters, the film uncovers the increasing visibility of basic needs insecurity in the UC system, the advocacy that followed to address it, the growth of UCI’s expansive basic needs center, and the impact it has on the UCI community and beyond.

“FRESH” Off the Press!

“The University of California, Irvine, established a text-based notification system for students to stop by a catered event after it’s over to pick up free food.”

Inside Higher Ed

“[It] is really important for us to not have students have to retell their stories or explain their needs to strangers again and again, but to just be able to be supported in one space as fast and effectively as possible”

The Los Angeles Times