“I was determined to convince my second-grade students that vegetables were just as cool as fidget spinners or slime.” Amanda Greenlee is the winner of the 2018 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $5,000 prize for her service site.

“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

Prior to the service term, all 228 FoodCorps AmeriCorps service members gather in Portland, Oregon for a week of training and cohort-building. Here’s what they had to say about this year’s National Orientation that took place earlier this month. 

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.