NC couple feeding hundreds of college students featured on NBC ‘Nightly News’
A Raleigh couple whose social media videos documenting their favorite meals went viral earlier this year were in the national spotlight again Thursday for their efforts to feed dozens of local college students.
Tom and Rachael Sullivan, introduced to people across North Carolina and the country this summer, were featured on NBC’s “Nightly News” in an “Inspiring America” segment for providing the students healthy, nutritious meals. In the process, they’ve created a sense of community by opening up their kitchen.
“I can name a hundred reasons why the kids come through, and they all have their own, and it’s unique to them,” Tom Sullivan said in the nationally broadcast interview.
The parents of Kevin Gallagher, a junior at North Carolina State University, used to host Rachael Sullivan for meals when she was in college, NBC reported. A decade later, the Sullivans, after having recently moved to Raleigh, reciprocated, inviting Gallagher over for meals throughout the pandemic.
When Rachael Sullivan posted a video about how they had “adopted” Gallagher on TikTok, it went viral, garnering nearly 2 million likes. With all that attention came an influx of messages from hundreds of other college students, inquiring if they could be “adopted” for home-cooked meals as well.
Curious, hungry students may have initially sought out the Sullivans for the home cooked meals, but over time, the impromptu meal service fostered a larger connection.
“This started during a time when COVID is still ongoing, right,” Rachael Sullivan told NBC News, in a portion of the interview posted on Twitter. “There’s so much isolation, and this is just giving students an opportunity to not only come together and have great food, but to find this community.”
In the time since, the Sullivans and their effort to bring students together over warm meals has been noticed by local vendors and chefs, who have reached out to help support and grow the initiative, NBC reported. The Sullivans started a website adoptacollegekid.com, for students to sign up for meals, and for the couple to collect donations.
“I think we always come back to the phrase ‘it takes a village,’” Rachael Sullivan said. “We wouldn’t be able to do this on our own.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 7:46 PM with the headline "NC couple feeding hundreds of college students featured on NBC ‘Nightly News’."
