This past year, FoodCorps received funding from AmeriCorps and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to place "motivated young leaders in limited-resource communities for a year of public service. FoodCorps service members strive to deliver hands-on nutrition education, build and tend school gardens, and bring high-quality local food into public school cafeterias."
FoodCorps chose to send its members to ten different states to perform public service: Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon, New Mexico, Maine, Michigan, Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Massachusetts. Each state has a "host site" that manages the FoodCorps service members working in that state. The host site helps manage the FoodCorps members' "service site," which is where the service members report for work each day. So there are three levels in the FoodCorps pyramid: FoodCorps National at the top, the state host site in the middle, and the service site at the bottom. My "host site" is the National Center for Appropriate Technology, a national non-profit that serves economically disadvantaged people by providing information and access to appropriate and sustainable technologies that can help improve their lives. NCAT has a regional office in Des Moines. My "service site" is the Department of Environmental Studies at Luther College, where I will be working with the Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (FFI) in Decorah, Iowa.
I start my first day of work tomorrow. So far, I have gone through the FoodCorps National Training in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as my service site's Iowa state training in Decorah. In Milwaukee, we learned about community organizing, local food procurement, working with food service directors and USDA school lunch rules and requirements, and starting and building school gardens. We ate delicious local and organic food from a Wisconsin catering company, and I had a great time getting to know all of the other 50 service members.
I arrived in Decorah last Saturday (a week from yesterday), and my parents and grandparents helped me move into my new apartment. I live in a little one bedroom apartment above a clothing store in downtown Decorah- I absolutely love it! On Tuesday, the Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (I will call it FFI from here on out) paid for all of the FoodCorps and AmeriCorps service members to go out to dinner at a restaurant called La Rana. There are 5 FoodCorps and AmeriCorps members in Decorah (working with FFI) and 2 FoodCorps members working in Des Moines (working with NCAT). All 7 of us were in Decorah this week for the host site and service site training.
All of the service members went through the Iowa FFI training on Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday we ended with a bike ride on the Decorah Trail and a canoe trip down the Upper Iowa River. On Saturday I drove to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to get some things for my apartment (Decorah is pretty small- we don't have any malls! But we have an amazing food co-op!) and on Sunday some of the service members and I made pizza and went to an open mic night at the restaurant below my apartment.
Pictures and more details about my work are coming soon!
I posted this to my Facebook, but in case you haven't seen these articles on FoodCorps, check it out!
Leah, you are a fabulous writer and I think this blog could be the start of a book!!!
ReplyDelete