These first two days at the Atlanta Community Food Bank have been a whirlwind. Yesterday I was put right to work. I met the other intern, Perri, an environmental science and agriculture student at University of Georgia, and we rode from the food bank together to the garden. There we met our supervisor, Fred, who is in charge of all the gardening operations at the Food Bank. He gave us a quick rundown of our day before a group of volunteers arrived. There were two groups, a small group of high school students from Florida and small group of middle school students from North Carolina. Perri took a group and I took another group and we harvested the three plots that were at the site. We collected peppers, snap peas, various types of squash, zucchini, cucumbers, garlic, and onions. Some of the group’s sponsors were asking their kids some questions about poverty and it was very interesting to hear some of their answers. After some serious harvesting, Perri and I got to bond over lunch. I’m really happy to have her working with me. We left the garden and went back to the food bank for a full tour of the facilities. We got to see the warehouse where all the non-perishable food is stored. Most of it comes in from donations from huge corporations, from small food drives, and from food that cannot be sold in stores due to packaging issues. After that we met some key people upstairs like the CEO Bill Bolling (who was named Georgian of the year), and many different project coordinators and people in the IT, marketing, PR, and accounting departments.
Today I felt like I had a better handle on my situation. The garden we worked in was actually on the Food Bank’s site, so we didn’t have to wake up as early for traveling. Our volunteers were also from Emory University and very hard workers and fun to talk to. Perri and I had them plant sweet potatoes and roses, mulch the rim of the garden, weed out various beds, turn the compost, and water all the newly planted crops. Fred even had a meeting so we were basically left to work on our own besides his part time assistant Lily, who is a little rough around the edges but has a great sense of humor once she decides to warm up to you. After she saw the way Perri and I handled the volunteers and how hard we worked, she must have decided she like us because she was very friendly after the volunteers left. After that we had a meeting with a consultant for the Captain Planet Foundation (yes, the Captain Planet). She told Perri and me about how we could help maintain some of the local school gardens this summer. Since there aren’t many people at the schools in the summer, they needed lots of help to keep the garden in order to prepare for the fall. Most of the gardens are not only used for beautification purposes but also for education. The Captain Planet Foundation is actually working on curriculum to go along with each school’s garden this summer. Overall, I am overwhelmed with excitement for the summer and can’t wait for the opportunities ahead of me. I know next to nothing about sustainable food systems, food insecurity, and other hunger issues right now and I hope to be proficient in the subjects come the end of the summer.