Wake Alternative Break - Campus Kitchen

Wake Forest University's Volunteer Service Trip to Washington, D.C. Volunteering with D.C. Central Kitchen by day and exploring the city by night. Leaders: Rachel Brown & Margaret Raney, Hu Womack (faculty)

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What an honor to work with DC Central Kitchen this week! Click the video link to learn how the organization addresses food insecurity in the city: https://vimeo.com/16663471

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Sorting out food insecurity

This week has been an eye-opening experience for certain. As someone who has personally experienced food insecurity, I struggled with how to approach this trip. I remember my mother, my sister and I brainstorming how to make a 40 dollar food budget work for the remainder of the week until my uncle got paid on Thursday, and could lend my mother money until Friday and we would start the cycle all over again. I have a vivid memory of my mom giving my sister and I twenty dollars for lunch and gas while she went to work hungry. I only wish that we had access to an organization like Capitol City Food Bank or the DC Central Kitchen. These two organizations work tirelessly to alleviate food insecurity in the DC area. Over the course of the week I have been immensely grateful for organizations we were blessed to work at. In the midst of sorting out donated food, I was trying to sort out other things as well. I was plagued by the thought of what causes food insecurity and the solution for it.  In what is arguably one of the greatest nations in the world, the production or amount of food is not the problem. Making sure everyone has access to it is the dilemma. As Clint Smith, a DC teacher and poet often says, Place matters. Often times, we discuss food insecurity as an abstract idea when in fact, this is a struggle people face everyday. One important thing to note is that poorer communities like the 7th and 8th ward in DC are likely to be classified as food deserts, commonly have high obesity rates. This seems ironic because if you do not have access to food, how can you be overweight. Well, it’s not that these residents do not have access to food, they do not have access to healthy affordable options. We often criticize poorer individuals for making poor eating choices when in reality they are not eating for health, but they are eating to survive. There is a different mindset that must be tackled if we are ever going to fix the issue of food insecurity. In addition, there must be healthy options placed in food deserts that provide an alternative choice to junk food. Lastly, middle class families should be able to receive some sort of government assistance to food, as it is mostly middle class families who do not receive help thus suffering the most. Further, studies show that children are the ones who suffer the consequences as well. I really appreciated the commitment that the organizations had to kids. There were programs in place that fed the children healthy breakfast and lunch and that also sent food home with the kids on the weekend. Overall, this week provided me with an indescribable service experience and even more, a new perspective on food insecurity. To be able to help with a systemic issue interrelated with a myriad of issues and something that I am personally connected to is beyond words. Finally, I met some amazing people from Wake!

Also, here is a great video explaining food insecurity in DC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saREW_BfxwY

Camry Wilborn

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Our assembly line at the food bank! #wab15 #prohumanitate

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Getting out of my comfort zone

After a great kick-off “cookout” on Saturday, a day of travel on Sunday, and a day working with nine amazing WFU students packing 520 boxes of food that filled 13 pallets on Monday, I’m starting to realize how lucky I am that I chose to step out of my comfort zone for a week and join this WAB. I’m a 47 year old “double deac” who wasn’t sure if I could still handle “roughing it” in a hostel for a week, but after getting to know the nine other students on this trip, I’m convinced I made the right decision. 

At the Capital Area Food Bank (http://www.capitalareafoodbank.org/), we packed 6 pallets in the morning and 7 in the afternoon, with time remaining for a tour of the facility. (Thanks to Darrin from the food bank, who helped us ramp up our afternoon productivity!) Darrin gave us a tour of this food bank north of DC whose mission is “to feed those who suffer from hunger in the Washington metro area by acquiring food and distributing it through its network of partner agencies; and educating, empowering and enlightening the community about the issues of hunger and nutrition.” We will return to the food bank on Friday for what I’m sure will be another amazing day!

Wednesday and Thursday we will spend the afternoon at the DC Central Kitchen (http://www.dccentralkitchen.org) and Thursday night, thanks to WFU professor Mary Dalton, we are attending a screening of “Living in the Overlap” at HRC, a documentary film http://action.hrc.org/site/Calendar?view=Detail&id=123641

As part of a WFU STEP Grant, students are using Lenovo Yoga Chromebook http://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-11e/ to document the trip and stay connected during the trip. If you are interested in our excellent accomodations (many thanks, Shelley Sizemore!) check out the Hostelling International Washington DC at this link! (http://hiwashingtondc.org)

The students are enjoying checking out all the sites in DC between our service opportunities, and I’m currently reflecting on what wonderful students we have a WFU. (I’m also catching up on contemporary culture and adding lots of new music to my iTunes collection!) Now I’m off to bed! It takes a lot of rest to keep up with the crowd! Oh, and before I go, I need to make a ‘shout out” to our incredible trip leaders, Margaret Raney and Rachel Brown for making this such a smooth and positive experience for us all!

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Brittany's Friday

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Goin' down to Georgetown gonna have ourselves a time!

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Willy's Final Reflection

Our Last day at the Central Kitchen was an eventful one.  I went out in the morning and served breakfast to many people with the First Helping Program.  I also helped prepare the evening meal at night by chopping potatoes. 

At reflection, we talked about what we learned this week and what we will take with us as we go home.  I think that the one thing I have seen this week is the complexity of the food security problem in this country.  I thought that simply giving people food would be the answer to the problem.  I've realized now that the answer is not a hand out but a hand up.  The real solutions are not programs that create dependency, but ones that bring people out of their current situation and help them live their lives independently again.  That is what organizations like the Central Kitchen are doing.  They provide training and resources for people to find jobs and combat hunger themselves.  It is all about relationships and working with people to create a long lasting solution.  

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The Tahoe makes it back to Winston

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Crystal's Final Reflection

Overall, this week has just been amazing. I met some really great people both from Wake and DC, and I learned a lot of things from all of them. I learned that it’s always good to feed the hungry; however, in the long run, handing out food is really only patching the problem rather than a real solution. There is still a lot that needs to be done and that can be done in order to find a real solution to all the intertwining problems that cause people to go hungry. I was reminded of the fact that no one is perfect, and that life is a learning experience. Whether it is me, the people in my life, or someone I’ve just met, everyone has made a mistake at one point and we each deserve the chance to learn from those mistakes. At times it can be easy to judge those you don’t know, but when you start to understand those other people it becomes a lot harder to make judgments. Probably one of the most important things I learned was that it’s okay to do volunteer work and feel good about it, but it’s also about much more than that. All the things that I’ve seen and learned from volunteering are things that I should carry back with me. That’s what makes this trip a true learning experience. Lastly, I just wanted to take moment to thank all the people on this trip for making this spring break pretty great. It wasn’t exactly a traditional spring break, but from the volunteering to the explorations of the city, it is one trip that I really enjoyed.

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We really like to eat things ~

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David captures Friday afternoon

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Miriam's Final Reflection

This week has been an incredible, eye-opening experience. We have had a wonderful time feeding the souls of the city and preparing food, but we are forced to ask- what does it really mean to fight hunger? Sure, we can do plenty on an individual scale, and even on a large scale, but there is no easy solution to this problem. It is horrible to see people go hungry, but it is a problem that has been around since the beginning of time. Back then, it was whether or not crops were plenty enough to last through the winter, but now it is more a matter of circumstances. Both of these things are out of the control of the people affected by hunger. One thing that we have heard over and over again from the staff at DC Central Kitchen is that the people we’re serving are most often put in this situation by circumstances that are out of their control. I think it’s important to note that the life we live one day can be turned inside out over a matter of weeks or months. In reflection tonight, David asked us to write down our definition of food justice. Everyone had great responses about using food as a tool to improve our communities. One of the most important things to remember as we give people food is that there has to be something beyond just that. A major reason why DC Central Kitchen is so successful is that they have programs to get people back on their feet, rather than just throwing food at them and hoping they

figure it out. Overall, my volunteering experience this week has been a great way to get a closer

view of the hardships people face and the most effective ways to help them.

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Free day in Georgetown!

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Agression.

Arthur Cao

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Arthur's Wednesday

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Who keeps the volunteers energized?

This reflection would cover my thoughts on the food preparation this morning.

Who is responsible for keeping the working interest of volunteers?

During the working time this morning, all we did was to cut tomatoes/ onions and put them into plates. To be honest, I got really bored in keeping doing that for three hours. During the conversation with other group members on the dinner table, I realized that others also feel bored and/or tired of today`s work. So I wonder: who would be responsible for the possible decrease in volunteer`s passion in doing their work? Of course volunteers should come for helping others, yet the means of keeping cutting vegetables for hours can make any people with emotion lose their energy. The reason of this is that cutting vegetables is an indirect way of helping in which people cannot interact with those being helped. This prevented the satisfaction that usual voluntary working can produce.

The next question comes to: is it the event planner`s responsibility to keep volunteer`s passion, or it`s volunteers` own sake to keep their passion? I would say that the event planner should find ways to avoid such activities from influencing the passion of volunteers. For example, the manager might give volunteers medals on how many people they actually helped, or give them see feedbacks/ thanks-giving letters directed to them. In this way, even if the volunteers` work is boring, it can still produce some level of satisfaction that volunteers can feel.

- Arthur

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Food for the Stomach and the Soul

Today was an intense day, I did first help in the morning and meal preparation in the afternoon session. I started to feel the Central Kitchen activities are all implementing the original idea of the founder, which was “use fool as a tool” to bridge a relationship between the people in need of food and us as purveyors. Especially today, when the volunteers were supplying the food to the homeless people, the supervisor James announced to them about the potential job opportunities. But as we noticed, few people in the line were actually interested in it. They were more eager for the food holding in our hands. This phenomenon touched me a lot by thinking about the short-run benefit produced by offering food. This action feeds the stomachs but sadly not the souls. I think more combination style programs need to be launched together with the food supply.

Joy