Farewell from 2017-2018 AmeriCorps VISTA Kelly Pinkley

Hi Whidbey, I’d like to take the time to thank you for welcoming me into your community and I am especially grateful to Good Cheer for all the experiences and opportunities I was given to learn and be a part of this amazing community resource. I came to this island ready to enjoy some calm to focus on my future projects after spending 5 very full years chasing passions of competitive roller derby, film projects, tiny home building, and all the exciting experiences Austin, Texas has to offer. The AmeriCorps role appealed to me because I was looking to gain more program management experience; so I applied, and was happy to bring my tiny home from Austin up here to the Pacific Northwest. I'd like to take this time and share a little bit of what I found exciting about this program, what I learned about food waste in our nation, and what makes Good Cheer so special -- in my eyes. Harvest Against Hunger is the sponsor site that placed me at Good Cheer Food Bank as an AmeriCorps VISTA. AmeriCorps is a federally funded program that places volunteers of all ages in different areas around the country. These volunteers gain a year of work experience wherever they are placed, as well as an education award to be used later for school or paying off school debt. Harvest Against Hunger is a Rotary First initiative to start gleaning programs all across our nation to fight food waste. The gleaning program at Good Cheer recovers produce from grocery store partners, farm partners, and the fruit tree gleaning recovers fruit from residential homeowners with a surplus to share. Through Harvest Against Hunger, these programs have full time AmeriCorps support until 2020. As much as I learned from Good Cheer, I also learned so much from Harvest Against Hunger and was able to attend a conference in Tacoma where I learned about the root causes of hunger and the social inequities that contribute to food insecurity. I learned that our societal demand for the most perfect-looking produce wastes food. Farmers get denied sales by supermarkets, causing perfectly edible food to end up in landfills. At that point it's not only wasting food, the greenhouse gases emitted cause further damage to the environment -- after all the resources it took to grow that produce in the first place.I also learned that all across the world gleaning programs are popping up to take a bite out of food waste and hunger. Not having a background in food systems, I had no idea that Good Cheer Food Bank was respected as a model program for other food banks. Good Cheer happens to be an innovative model with more than an acre of garden space growing fresh produce for the food bank and South Whidbey School District, and a shopping model that gives clients the right to choose what they want. Choice models like this one instill a sense of dignity, when so often food assistance can be a source of shame. Produce also comes to the food bank from many local community members, as well as from the gleaning program which I helped coordinate. So thank you Whidbey for being a community so concerned about your fellow community members; accepting and welcoming the new faces who move in, and being open to new ideas that better your systems. I hope to eventually find my place here: helping with projects that fuel my passion and allow me to help in the housing crisis that is facing the workforce population, maybe teaching some rollerskating, stumbling into more bioluminescence on Double Bluff Beach, and all the while trying to be my best self for me and the people I surround myself with. Cheers!

- Kelly Pinkley