“Thanks to a particularly fierce Boston winter, our school year was dotted with snow days. Each time a cancellation was announced, I noticed students’ distress, rather than glee. ‘Their families rely on school meals,’ a teacher told me. ‘They might not know if they get to eat tomorrow.'” Ellie Doyle was a runner-up in the 2018 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $1,000 prize for her service site.

“No matter how healthy the food on their lunch plate is, for students to feel nourished, they must be in a space where they feel as though they are welcome and understood.” Zoe Flavin was a runner-up in the 2018 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $1,000 prize for her service site.

Each year we invite new members to join our Alumni Council to bring fresh perspectives and passions to the group. They are here to support all alumni in launching initiatives they’d like to start, in lifting their voices to FoodCorps’ National team, and in advancing their career goals post-FoodCorps. Meet the Council members below and … Continued

As a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I got pretty creative in the name of connecting kids to healthy food in school. I donned vegetable costumes in the cafeteria, danced around in the garden in front of a live audience of 30 children, and hauled five-gallon buckets of compost through the hallways, to name a few.

Years before I became a busy FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I was already a dedicated journaler. My seminal journal entries usually began with a dramatic “Dear Diary…” and continued with thorough retellings of my second-grade days. A decade and a half later, my journals are more like anchors that ground me within the daily whirl.

This June, FoodCorps brought together 20 aspiring school food service leaders to help them explore careers in school food, build their network, and get hands-on experience working in school food. They traveled from all over the country to learn from leaders in the field. Vanika Jethwa CT ’17, an alum who joined us from Keene, NH, shares reflections on her experience at the training. 

In a town north of Los Angeles, Mar Vista Elementary School stands almost completely surrounded by farmland. On one side is a field of strawberries, the crop that made the town famous. On the other, it’s rows and rows of hoop houses containing what they’re pretty sure is artichokes. The town has long been an agricultural community, and many of the students at Mar Vista are from families that work in the fields.

FoodCorps is honored to present Amarilys with this year’s Alumni Service Leadership Award. When Amarilys Olivo (NJ ’17) founded a community garden, she decided to call it the “Garden of Worker Bees.” Bees work collaboratively to take care of their community; each bee has its role and contributes to the well-being of the whole. Amarilys wanted to emulate that work ethic to create opportunities for learning, building healthy lifestyles, and connecting with fellow community members.