Jimmy Donaldson — better known as Mr. Beast — held up a Drexel University DragonCard to his nearly 20 million followers on the YouTube channel Beast Philanthropy on Nov. 12. 

“This card alone,” Mr. Beast states, “has saved over three million people from malnutrition.” 

The student ID belonged to Evan Ehlers, Drexel alumnus and founder of the charitable organization Sharing Excess. 

In collaboration with Sharing Excess, Beast Philanthropy has committed to donating 30 million dollars in food. Dedicated to preventing food waste and feeding the hungry, but in need of financial support, Ehlers’ team at Sharing Excess reached out to Mr. Beast with a record-breaking idea: creating the world’s largest food distribution. From there, a partnership was launched. 

Through their existing warehouse, Sharing Excess has rescued over 14 million pounds of food, sorting through produce daily. In their newest endeavor with Beast Philanthropy, they’re taking on Hunts Point Produce Market in New York City, the largest in the world. 

Their first distribution in NYC was their biggest one yet; as Ehlers emphasizes in the video, they finally have “enough food to actually make a huge dent in the problem.” 

Now, Beast Philanthropy donates over two million meals a month. 

As a graduate of Drexel’s Close School of Entrepreneurship, Ehlers shared valuable insights into his journey and the lessons he learned along the way.  

When Ehlers started Sharing Excess as a student, it was just a way to use the excess meal swipes in his account; he found himself wanting to offer the food to anyone who needed it. 

He took some of the tips he learned from his major — “give it a name, take some videos… try to inspire other students to do the same thing.” From there, it snowballed. 

When he began hitting bureaucratic walls regarding the university allowing meal swipe donations, Ehlers started reaching out to his friends who were cashiers at grocery stores and cafes, such as Trader Joe’s and Saxby’s. He and a group of students started picking up food that was perfect quality but being thrown away and gave it out to community organizations. 

Ehlers would utilize his grandma’s car daily between classes: “I would Tetris the boxes in the back, and I always had to leave a little room at the top so I could see out the windshield. It was probably a little dangerous.” 

Their work expanded through word of mouth, and they began organizing fundraisers and making local partnerships. When the pandemic hit, there was a great increase in food insecurity; jobs were lost, and food was simultaneously wasted as businesses closed. Throughout the pandemic, Sharing Excess became the backbone of the food distribution scene in Philadelphia, known for being incredibly reactive. 

“Every time we’d get that bat signal, there’s food around, we’d go,” Ehlers explained.

Now, the organization has grown to thirty-five employees and continues to distribute food in 26 states. They have partnered with many foundations and organizations, including Mr. Beast’s, to make this happen; at this moment, every dollar donated to Sharing Excess lets them donate 20 pounds of food, and they’re raising about 2.7 million dollars a year. 

Ehler was recently featured in Forbes’ 2023 list of 30 Under 30, which gave the organization national exposure. The video on Beast Philanthropy’s YouTube channel has garnered 13 million views in three weeks, which resulted in even more exposure; people have reached out to Ehler from 47 different cities across 17 countries, looking to implement some form of Sharing Excess. Now, he faces the exciting challenge of scaling the organization to an international level.  

When asked about how current students at Drexel could work to impact their community as he did, Ehlers’ advice was simple: “If you’ve identified a problem, don’t let it sit in the back of your mind. Get up and try to do something about it today.” 

During its earliest stages, Ehlers shared that he struggled to believe an organization like Sharing Excess could change the world, even at a smaller level. However, he realized that change starts with small actions, and every effort contributes to a larger impact over time.  

He also emphasized the value of leveraging Drexel’s resources. After he presented his idea for Sharing Excess, the Close School provided Ehlers with six months of co-op, funding and office space on the fourth floor of Pearlstein Learning Center to develop it further. 

“It’s kind of like the co-op that never ended,” he remarked, “because I’m still doing it to this day.” 

Ehlers’ parting words suggested that current Drexel students join and support our chapter of Sharing Excess, which continues to make a tangible difference locally by addressing food insecurity and waste. 

Humza Imam, current junior and president of Sharing Excess at Drexel, shares some of their current initiatives: “We have pop-ups at the Dragon Statue and on Lancaster Walk every other Friday… we’re working with the overarching organization now to do pop-ups at the Dornsife Center to engage with the local community outside of campus.” 

“Volunteering together is a great way to make friends while helping your community,” Imam added. 

Ehlers’ entrepreneurial journey, from gathering extra meal swipes as a Drexel student to having Sharing Excess’s story heard by millions, underscores the transformative nature of seemingly small initiatives. The partnership with Mr. Beast is only the beginning for this organization, and the future holds limitless opportunities for growth, making this the perfect time for current students to get involved. 

“To see that there are students to this day collecting those donated meal swipes… it’s just such an awesome feeling to know that something you started can have a legacy,”  Ehler stated. 

Students from Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania walked out of class at noon on Oct. 25 to gather at the Dragon Statue in solidarity with Palestine and the people of Gaza. The walkout was organized by Drexel’s Students for Justice in Palestine as part of a larger “call for students and all sectors of society… to participate in a national walkout,” according to their Instagram account. 

Along with “students all over the [US] from over 100 universities,” these demonstrators gathered to “condemn the siege on Gaza and condemn genocide and stand in resolute solidarity with Palestine.”

So far, Israel’s bombardments in Gaza have resulted in at least 8,796 casualties, including at least 3,648 children, according to Al Jazeera. Israel claims its actions are in response to Hamas’ attacks in southern Israel, which have resulted in at least 1,405 casualties, at least 1,020 of whom were civilians, along with 240 hostages whose status is currently unconfirmed.

Members of SJP and other student speakers aimed to highlight the role of university communities, especially Drexel and UPenn, in exacerbating the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They claimed that “Penn and Drexel are both complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. Both universities trade with and invest in companies that aid the colonization of Palestinian land and the building of illegal settlements.”

They cited multiple companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which Drexel partners with for co-ops and other opportunities. Weapons manufactured by Boeing and Lockheed Martin supply over 70 percent of Israel’s arms purchases that come from the US, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. HP has been criticized for its role in the development of surveillance technologies deployed by Israel in the West Bank.

They further added that Drexel and Penn are “[complicit], whether it’s through the programs they have, their study abroad, [or] their refusals to even say the word Palestinian.” The latter referred to the statements made by John Fry, and other similar statements, which SJP and Drexel’s Muslim Student Association, along with other student organizations, considered to be exclusionary of Palestinian voices and neglectful of the grief of Muslim and Arab communities at Drexel.

After speakers made statements, approximately 200 demonstrators moved south from the Dragon Statue past the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building and towards Penn’s Broken Button, making chants along the way. Drexel Police kept 33rd Street clear of vehicles until the group had passed.

A Penn student spoke about the challenges students supporting Palestine have to face, including being “threatened by harassment and doxing,” which she feels “the university has done nothing about.” 

She expressed her determination despite these challenges and added, “I’m here as a student today and we know why we’re here. We’re here to hold our universities accountable. We’re here to demand an immediate ceasefire, divestment from our universities from companies continuing to fund this genocide, an end to the violent occupation and to free Palestine.”

Nada Abuasi, a graduate student at Drexel and a member of SJP, added to the previous student’s concerns, stating “Students aren’t even able to speak freely. There are people who have masked today because they know that there’s a risk that their faces will be kept on billboard signs with their names underneath.” 

Trucks showing the names and faces of individuals who expressed support for Palestine have been spotted on the campuses of Harvard and Columbia.

Abuasi added that “Palestinian students can’t express their solidarity without being reprimanded or punished. People are worried that they’ll lose their scholarships, their job offers, their grad school offers. Palestinians and their allies are being monitored, surveilled and stopped by the institution and by so-called public safety officials.”

Abuasi also called out the media and journalists in the West as “a breeding ground for distorting narratives, for reinforcing power structures and asymmetry, and for perpetuating harmful narratives.”

She called the current coverage of demonstrations relating to Israel and Palestine “selective reporting” and “lousy journalism.” 

When later asked by The Triangle about what specifically she felt the media was misrepresenting, she said “certain reporters purposely under-report the amount of support that Palestinians have…  I would want you to look around [and] see how many people are showing up, people who aren’t Arab, people who aren’t Muslim, people who aren’t Palestinian who have come out and shown their support for Palestine.”

Abuasi underscored her concerns with the chant: “Every time the media lies, a neighborhood in Gaza dies.”

Previous protests and gatherings in support of Palestine in the Penn and Drexel communities saw little media coverage other than that of the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, and The Triangle. Following calls for more comprehensive reporting across Philadelphia, at the Oct. 25 walkout there were reporters, photographers and film crews from multiple organizations including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Nieuwsuur, a Dutch television program.

Members of the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and neighboring communities gathered in front of the Van Pelt Library on Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 12 p.m. at a vigil for the victims of the al-Ahli Baptist hospital bombing in Gaza. 

The vigil was broadly organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, an alliance of several community organizations with the stated goal of “working to support & uplift Palestinian leadership & liberation.” It was supported by various groups such as Drexel’s Students for Justice in Palestine, Penn Against the Occupation and Police Free Penn. Most of the speakers were faculty from UPenn and nearby universities, but a UPenn student and a Drexel student also spoke.

In the center of the vigil, students held up graphic pictures, including those of children at al-Ahli Baptist hospital after the bombing and of Wadea Al Fayoume, the Palestinian American boy that was murdered last Sunday in Illinois. Throughout the event, the introductory speaker announced that the purpose of the gathering was not only to “mourn the immense loss of life” but that they were also “calling for action and demanding justice.” 

Raz Segal, director of the Holocaust and Genocide graduate program at Stockton University and an expert historian on the Holocaust, spoke out against the misuse of Holocaust history to support the Israeli cause, stating that “many scholars in my field, [including] Jewish scholars, are now standing with you [Palestine].” 

Segal claimed that “Israel, supported by the west…. has been using Holocaust history in order to justify, to rationalize, to deny and to distort Israeli mass violence against Palestinians.” 

As a scholar and expert on genocide and oppression, Segal said, “there is nothing that hurts me” more than the “dehumanizing… [and] demonizing discourse” surrounding Palestinians in Gaza.

Suvir Kaul, Professor of English at UPenn, read a public statement signed by 800 “scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies,” as labeled by said statement. The four page statement, previously brought up by Segal, was released on Oct. 15, through Third World Approaches To International Law. 

It intends to “sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” by utilizing the academic community’s vast research into such events.

Nada Abuasi, a graduate student at Drexel studying communication, culture, and media, and member of Drexel’s Students for Justice in Palestine, expressed her own grief and determination, stating “we’re here to mourn the eternal souls of our martyrs, but our mourning should never be mistaken for defeat.” 

She highlighted the role of the United States in the region, citing the United Nations Security Council resolution that was supported by 12 of 15 member countries, which would have allowed it to pass, but was vetoed by the United States. The resolution was drafted by Brazillian diplomats and would have called for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza.

A group of around 20 silent counter-protestors gathered opposite the vigil holding Israeli flags and signs condemning Hamas and anti-semitism. According to a member of the counter-protest, a second group gathered at a different location around 12:30 p.m.. At around 1:10 p.m., they moved towards the vigil, approximately doubling the counter-protest group, and started chanting.  

They responded to the pro-Palestine chants such as “there is only one solution: Intifada revolution,” with counter-chants such as “Hamas is ISIS.”

The gathering was concluded with several prayers and poems in many different languages. Segal recited a Hebrew prayer, Fatemeh Shams, Associate Professor of Persian Literature at UPenn, recited a Persian poem, and a South African student sang the anti‐apartheid Xhosa song “Senzeni Na?” along with others. Then, the group marched in silence towards Walnut Street.