Part 1
For my Service Action Proposal, my identified area of service is helping those who are hungry in our community. I decided to choose this area of service due to my past philanthropic work. Back when I used to live in Boston, I was part of a mother-daughter organization called National Charity League, where I participated in many philanthropic programs, but sadly, never at many events that helped those in need of food. Now, I can finally contribute to hunger relief here in North Carolina. Providing to the hungry is crucial because it will keep those who receive the food connected with new community members and resources to continue eating.
The main issue within the world of hunger is not having access to or affordability of food. Another main aspect is that a lot of affordable food is unhealthy. A pressing need is looking out for the health of these people, rather than just giving out junk food and feeling like we have made a change. Nutritional meals that are not too expensive are necessary in addition to food education, which would help people maintain healthier eating habits, slowly improving this issue of people not knowing what food is the right food to eat. This project can address these needs by providing the hungry with nutritious food at little to no cost.
Helping out with this food issue connects to how I reflected on serving as an inspiration to others to demonstrate being a good relational leader. I also reflected on how great it is that community service hours are required for the Impact Leadership Village because encouraging students to do volunteer work will push them to try something new that is for a good cause and can make them feel like a relational leader through their volunteer work. So, taking time to help give out food or organize a way to improve the community’s hunger issue will allow the students to feel this gratitude. Additionally, I touched upon how doing community service will help those contributing to work together and improve their relational leadership skills.
Part 2
The community partner that I decided to contact was the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, which is headquartered in Raleigh, but operates in Wake, Durham, Johnston, Orange, Chatham, Nash and Edgecombe counties. Their main mission is to end hunger in these communities, but they specifically do this by re-routing healthy food that has been thrown away to people who need it. A large issue of interest for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle is that there is a wide variety of people who are affected by hunger, including young children in school all the way to senior citizens. Because of this, they designed multiple programs within their organization to ensure that everyone receives the food they need.
This community partner attends to those in hunger’s needs through its multiple programs. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s main programs aimed towards children include Backpack Buddies, where they attend to food-insecure homes throughout the school year, their food trucks, and supplying school pantries with fresh food. For members other than children, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle hosts mobile markets for the community and puts together grocery bags for seniors. All of these programs provide various ways for almost anyone in need of food to receive it. In the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s current events, they recently just partnered with Smithfield Foods, which will provide a more convenient space for students to access nutritious food. Furthermore, a class called “Sprout Scouts” took place earlier this fall, where the Food Shuttle Urban Agricultural staff taught students about nutrition and cooking with a hands-on curriculum. This group of kids were taught gardening practices and tasted new foods that are super healthy to eat and were enjoyed by these children.
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle splits up their staff into multiple subdivisions, such as Food Recovery and Distribution, Community Health Education and Farming, with vice presidents, directors, and managers running each section. The board of directors managing each branch of the organization are the ones who make the decisions, but if something needs to be altered, the main administration of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle will be contacted and held responsible for sorting out what needs to be done. The subdivisions also have power themselves to organize how they interact with each other, such as if food from the farm needed to be transferred to the warehouse, for example, the directors could decide to look for volunteers to help get this done.
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle also informed me of how they receive volunteers through their calendar on their website. The calendar is color-coded based off of their various subdivisions and there are a wide variety of volunteer positions for anyone to sign up for, including shuttle driver, front desk help, gardening, farm work, and running the mobile market. Whether someone wants to help collect eggs on the farm or drive around the community and distribute the food, there is a place for the young and old to help out in.
After the interview, I could tell that the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle organizes themselves with the relational leadership model quite well, especially with how they split up their staff under each subdivision. This organization is very process-oriented, due to how each subdivision is constantly working towards a goal but mainly focuses on working off of the other subdivisions to reach success. They are very inclusive too, especially with their various options for community members to volunteer in. Lastly, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s purpose to relieve hunger is very ethical, as it puts others before themselves to ensure that people have healthy food to eat.
Part 3
For my community service action plan, I want to implement short, yet engaging education lessons brought by the food trucks to public spaces or neighborhoods. The purpose of this plan is to present a little bit of knowledge about where the food truck food came from and its nutrition, distributing valuable information to those eating it and helping them get a better sense of more healthy food that they can eat. Everyone deserves to know where their food comes from and talking to someone who works for an organization that focuses on fighting hunger is substantial to understanding the food distribution process and how these people are bringing these communities food, something that everyone depends on to survive.
My action plan will successfully address the ethical, inclusive and empowering sections of the relational leadership model. This educative food truck demonstrates ethics by delivering information that the customers deserve to hear about what they are eating and how they can improve their nutrition. It is also inclusive because these people can now understand the process of this healthy food, rather than only the staff handing out the food understanding the nutritional value of the food. A general audience is included into this health process, since this information is not too complex to understand and should not be kept as a secret from the public; everyone deserves to comprehend where their food comes from and how it will impact their bodies. Outside community members can be included as well by volunteering to drive in the truck and help distribute food or maybe even help with the informational lessons. Lastly, those teaching the information as well as those receiving it are being empowered. Those eating the food truck food will feel more empowered with containing more information behind the nutrition to keep eating healthy and teach others about what they were educated about. Those distributing the food can feel empowered by knowing that they were a part of this good cause and will feel determined to continue distributing and educating.
The process to put this plan into action takes multiple steps. First, we would need to train the drivers or volunteers about what they would be teaching, depending on the foods or meals that they would be giving out that day. I would also like to create brochures with nutritional information on them as well as affordable and accessible meals that the customers can take home with them. I also think that these lessons would be more intriguing to people if the back of the food truck could be open and the driver could present from there, so friends and families can see inside the truck and how the food is prepared. Lastly, I would create a website to spread the word about where these trucks will be at what times and presenting what food. They will mostly drive near lower-income neighborhoods or homeless shelters.
While developing this proposal, I felt very determined. Determination flooded over me to create a plan that would bring up an idea that the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle would never have thought of but could be a valuable addition to their program or fighting food hunger in general. My experience was a little different than I predicted it to be, since I thought that developing this proposal would feel more like a chore, yet as I continued to learn more about the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and craft my own food service project, I felt totally engaged in helping fight hunger in the surrounding North Carolina Communities.
My perspective concerning hunger relief did change, as I began to view this volunteer program through the eyes of a creator rather than from the perspective of a volunteer, which I am usually used to being. I was impacted by the structure of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and how their staff handled issues, so I formed some of my project around how they run their organization, implementing relational leadership along the way.
There are a few prominent root causes for hunger in the United States, the leading one being the poverty trap. Those born into poverty or those who have slowly ended up with extreme financial difficulties will suffer with food issues regardless, since continuously having to search for nutritious options for not only themselves at times, but also their family members or friends, becomes hard to keep up with. People can fall into this trap when the market becomes unstable or the economy becomes unreliable. Furthermore, food wastage is something that the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle works to re-route to people who lack a sufficient food supply, but is a prominent cause for hunger. Those who throw out perfectly good food are very wasteful and should understand that even if they do not want it, others may need that in order to survive. Also lately, there has been a lack of agricultural investment. Because of this, a lot of healthy options have been harder to afford with the decrease in crop cultivation. Despite these causes for hunger, there are many ways in which individuals and communities can contribute to help fight hunger.
One of the main contributions to the success of large projects such as fighting hunger includes collaboration. Taking a stand as an individual to volunteer your time to help out with a global issue demonstrates great relational leadership, but collaborating with other individuals or organizations can be much more successful. A factor that hinders this success is disorganization because when it comes to projects like these especially when there are many subdivisions and people involved, the project can become hectic, preventing productivity and accomplishing goals.
If I was in charge of implementing my project, I would improve it by collaborating with another organization that fights hunger. The more help we can get, the more food that will be distributed and information spread about nutrition and establishing connections with other companies brings partnership and eventually relational leadership factors, which can be utilized to create a successful work environment.
Designing this proposal has brought me to a few key takeaways that I will be able to use throughout my time in the Impact Leadership Village. I got to view how an outside organization organizes themselves and uses the relational leadership model in their own way, allowing me to have learned new methods to be a successful leader. Also, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle has some simple yet greatly impactful programs to further fight hunger, so maybe introducing this to some of the Community Leaders and creating a CL program dedicated to helping this or making an announcement about it during one of the general body meetings would be helpful in spreading the knowledge that I have gained while working through this project. Lastly, I can apply my takeaways from interviewing the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle into future interviews and even just discussing global issues with other Village members and leaders.