Merced Times

The University of California Merced and Delhi High School came together on Earth Day to officially open a community fridge — a public-based source of whole fruit and vegetables — for the Delhi area.

The fridge is free and open to the public, with a location for both picking up food and dropping off donations, according to the U.C. Merced website. The Delhi site is at 16881 Schendel Ave. and is open from 3-10 p.m., Monday through Friday.

“It’s been a whirlwind of a month since we’ve been open,” sustainable foods coordinator at UC Merced Erin Meyer said during the virtual grand opening. “We’re finally doing the ribbon cutting, and we’re so, so excited to be doing it on Earth Day.”

Delhi High School principal Cristian Miley said that the fridge in Delhi began with work done in cooperation with UC Merced’s Steve Roussos to respond to local food insecurity. Roussos identified that the high school would make a good location for a people’s fridge due to its public accessibility.

“We were able to take Steve’s idea, and through the connections that he had, we were able to get a lovely fridge donated to us,” Miley said.

They then gathered materials and staff and students from the school designed and built a wooden enclosure for the fridge with decorative elements, he said. The facility was open for six weeks before the grand opening. Though they didn’t have much interest in the first week, once they got information out to the community through flyers in lunch sacks, things turned around.

“Once we got those flyers out there, over the next five weeks, I have refilled the fridge seven times because people are coming,” Miley said. “And it’s been one of the greatest joys of what I do because we are actually part of the solution to food insecurity now, in our own community.”