Student Info
Name: Haleigh Ryneski
Term: Winter 2018
Credits: 12
Title: Local Food for Change
Contact Info
Contract mode: Internship Learning Contract
Sponsor name: Sarah Williams
Internship Info (if applicable):
Internship hours/wk: 20
Internship credits: 10
Academic credits: 2
Field Supervisor
Field supervisor: G. Scott Brown
Title: Co-founder
Organization: Farm to Fit
Field supervisor: Amoreena Guerrero
Title: Youth Program Coordinator and Educator
Organization: Growing Gardens
Field supervisor: Rhonda Johnson
Title: Manager
Organization: Celebrate Catering
Program Description
Narrative:
This ILC will focus in on several organizations located in Portland, Oregon that are involved or working to be involved in localizing food sustainably. The first organization ran by an Evergreen alum, Farm to Fit, is a food delivery program that designs meal plans for local customers, emphasizing on their specific dietary needs while creating delicious food. They focus on locally sourced, portioned controlled meals to promote an accessible and healthy diet. The second organization is with Growing Gardens who introduce cultivated food into schools, backyards and correctional facilities to create healthy and equitable communities. Their work is promoted through volunteers that perform work anywhere from creating raised beds to leading garden education classes. The final organization is Celebrate Catering, a local company catering fresh ingredients at customer requested events, including meals such as the “Sustainability Feast”. They also are looking to implement more sustainable practices.
Within the guidelines of the ILC, each organization will include work several hours a week that adhere to a sustainable or localized academic focus. At Farm to Fit, hours will be spent overlooking customers nutritional data to create meals fitting their dietary needs, work in the kitchen handling the food and involvement in what it takes to run and promote a local business. Growing Garden’s volunteer work will include weekly visits to an after-school, elementary program to assist in educating youth on what it takes to cultivate food from a garden. The time spent at Celebrate Catering includes working at a bistro that turns local produce into meals, marketing to customers on why to choose a local organization for their event and introducing new ideas on sustainable practices to be implemented within the catering company, such as tackling restaurant waste management.
A weekly online journal will be updated to provide pictures and details of work done at each organization as well as a log of hours. An open forum will be provided with access between classmates so that faculty and students can see other student’s work and comment on it with opinions or suggestions. To catch up on hours not met, academic texts focusing on creating and maintaining a local, sustainable food system will be read and analyzed. These texts include Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Robert Paalberg, The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the struggle for Healthy Eating by Anthony Winson, Food Tourism and Regional Development: Networks, Products and Trajectories by Collin Michael Hall and Stefan Gossling and The Political Economy of Food and Finance by Ted P. Schmidt.
| Learning objective | Activity | Deliverable |
| To learn about how to take specific nutritional needs and form that into enriched meals at a local level | Spend anywhere from 5 to 10 hours a week at Farm to Fit, looking at nutritional data for specific customers, packing and delivering the food and spending time in the kitchen to help prepare food. | Updated ePortfolio listing details of work performed weekly |
| To introduce new perspectives to youth on creating plentiful and equitable, local food | Anywhere from 3-7 hours a week volunteering at Glenfair Elementary School in Portland assisting the Garden Coordinator in educating youth about food and gardening | Updated ePortfolio listing details of work performed weekly |
| To get an understanding on running a local catering company working towards implementing more sustainable practices | 10 to 15 hours a week will be spent working at a bistro using local ingredients, working in customer service to market a local business and introducing new ideas on adhering to sustainable restaurant practices | Updated ePortfolio listing details of work performed weekly |
| Academic readings – Analyzing texts that relate to the “natural” and “Local” food movement, how that has impacted the restaurant industry and food movements within Portland | – Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Robert Paalberg
– The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the struggle for Healthy Eating by Anthony Winson -Food Tourism and Regional Development: Networks, Products and Trajectories by Collin Michael Hall and Stefan Gossling -The Political Economy of Food and Finance by Ted P. Schmidt |
Updated ePortfolio listing details of work performed weekly |
Evaluation of Work
- Narrative evaluation from field supervisor emailed to sponsor
- Narrative self-evaluation from student
- Weekly posts on program website
- Logged hours with detailed descriptions