For the full article: http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4422&Itemid=53

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A mere two days before the class of 2013 began to arrive at W&L, I went with Jenny to make CKP’s first food pickup from Walmart.   After some initial confusion about which of the many back doors we were supposed to go to, we made our way to the egg bunker where we met the women who would be facilitating the food pick-ups.  As they took us to the back of the store, I was stunned by the sheer volume of food.  The women gave us a brief tour and then we started loading up the cars.  My first impression of these two women was how excited they were that this food was not going to be wasted.  Despite the fact that they had to do some extra work to give us the food, they were more than happy to do so and just as excited as we were to be rescuing this food that otherwise would have been wasted.  Walmart has high standards on what can be sold, so there is an abundance of perfectly good food that they cannot sell because of damaged packaging.  The number of eggs that they were throwing out was unbelievable.  After saving the eggs for only two days, they were able to send us away with over 500 eggs.  From now on, CKP will be picking up from Walmart three times a week, which will supply more than enough food to fill the fridges and many hungry mouths, if my experience is any indication of a normal Walmart run.                            - Austin Branstetter

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Awards to promote social justice

The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People

The mission of Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP) is to empower poor, oppressed and disadvantaged people who are seeking to change the structures that perpetuate poverty, oppression and injustice.  SDOP is taking applications year round for partnerships where a project is owned and controlled by the group of people who will benefit directly from it. Projects should address long-term correction of conditions that keep people bound by poverty and oppression

Awards Connect Gardening and Hunger Issues
National Gardening Association: Healthy Sprouts Awards
The mission of the National Gardening Association (NGA) is to promote home, school, and community gardening as a means to renew and sustain the essential connections between people, plants, and the environment. The NGA Healthy Sprouts Awards support school garden programs throughout the country that use the garden to teach youth about nutrition and the issue of hunger in the United States. Winning programs will receive $200 or $500 gift certificates from Gardener’s Supply Company, seed packets, and literature from NGA. Applicants must plan to garden in 2010 with at least 15 children between the ages of 3 and 18 years. The application deadline is October 17, 2009. Application guidelines and forms are available on the NGA website.

Awards to make a difference

Pay It Forward Foundation

The Pay It Forward Foundation was established to educate and inspire students to realize that they can change the world, and provide them with opportunities to do so. Students, teachers, and community partners are encouraged to formulate their own ideas of how they can pay it forward.  Pay It Forward mini-grants of up to $500 are designing to fund one-time only service-oriented projected identified by youth as activities they would like to perform to benefit their school, neighborhood, or greater community.  Projects must contain a “pay it forward” focus – that is, they must be based on the concept of one person doing a favor for others, who in term do favors for others, with the results growing exponentially – to be considered in the grant-making process. Applications are due for consideration September 15^th for October 1^st funding, and also February 15 for March 1^st funding.

Awards for Youth-Led Service-Learning Projects addressing Childhood Obesity

UnitedHealth HEROES grant sponsored by Youth Service America and UnitedHealth

Educators, service-learning coordinators, students in the health professions, public health professionals, and community partners are eligible to apply for the UnitedHealth HEROES service-learning project grants. Grant recipients will receive up to $1,000 in support for service-learning projects that focus on childhood obesity, engage youth ages 5-25 in the planning and implementation process, and take place during Semester of Service 2010 (MLK Day, January 18, to Global Youth Service Day, April 23-25).

States eligible for this year’s UnitedHealth HEROES program include:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.

Awards to support nonprofits doing good in their community

Tom’s of Maine

Tom’s of Maine wants to support nonprofit organizations working to do good in their community.  They are taking submissions until August 30th, and five nonprofits will be selected to receive $20,000 for their projects. Applications should support community involvement projects from nonprofit organizations.

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No, this isn’t a joke: it’s CKP’s Nopalitos Innovation Award. And for the first time ever, we’re accepting nominations for this highly coveted honor!

WHAT IS IT? The Nopalitos Innovation Award is a quarterly recognition given to the CKP leader who shows innovation in programming, sustainability and/or student development. The award is named for a jar of Nopalitos (pickled cactus) donated to the Campus Kitchen at Saint Louis University during their first food drive in 2001. This unofficial “mascot” serves as a reminder of the distinct personality of each Campus Kitchen, and of CKP’s emphasis on creativity and innovation.

WHO’S ELIGIBLE? Any “innovative” CKP leaders—staff or student, individual or team—are eligible for the award.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “INNOVATIVE?” You tell us! Previous award recipients have pioneered year-round Culinary Job Training programs, developed volunteer management systems, created blogs and even taken the food stamp challenge.

HOW DO I SUBMIT A NOMINATION? Email Maureen Roche with the name of your nominee and a brief description of what makes that person truly innovative. Nominations are due July 20.

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Sometimes doing good is more than just helping others, but inspiring others to help others too.  These two guys think they change the world, even if it’s one person, one community at a time.

Do you think it can work?

This is Project Everlasting, a quest to change the world one heart at a time.  Maybe we need to find out what people really need.

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But that’s not all.  We’re also looking to make our volunteers into leaders.  And then have those leaders turn into the non-profit professionals of the future.  It seems like a meaningful conversation about where to go in the non-profit world is one that many people aren’t having.  Many of you are probably getting ready to embark on “The Job Search” or already have.  I thought I’d run through a few ways to look for non-profit jobs.

I’ve done a few non-profit job searches in my time, so I thought I’d pass along a little bit of wisdom about this site and what I see as well as some other sites and their advantages as well.

I’ll start with the Jobs for Change site.  The first thing I like about the site is that it’s easy to navigate.  You can find what you’re looking for and it’s quite helpful in narrowing the topics into sections that you may be interested in.  You can quickly browse job categories, FAQs, and ask your own new questions.  The frequently asked questions they list are actually quite relevant, and there is even a specific area for college based questions.  Many of them have been submitted by what we would assume are prospective non-profit workers and the answers seem to be fairly insightful.  If you’re thinking about the non-profit sector or already have some questions, odds are they’ve answered them so take a look.

There are a few drawbacks to the site.  The first is that if you’re looking for job listings, this isn’t your go to place.  But I’d remind anyone that no one place that best.  Remember not everyone posts jobs everywhere so keep your eyes open on some other sites.  It doesn’t seem like they have as many listings as some other sites that I’ve seen, but again, this shouldn’t be a deal breaker for using the site.  It’s usefulness is above and beyond some sites as a resource guide.

When it comes to finding a site that has a lot of contacts, at this point I’d recommend www.idealist.org.  To be honest, I’ve found both of my past two jobs on Idealist and it’s a site that I would also recommend as well.  Idealist also has a lot of resources on non-profits.  But their information is often much more specific and pertaining to fields direct non-profit fields.  This is particularly bad if you’d still color in the undecided box.  For the case of the average college student Jobs for Change is a great resource because it allows you to get answers that are more general.  Often you don’t know how or where or what you’re looking for when you get started; Idealist can be a bit overwhelming at first.  But if you are interested in a gluttony of information that are extensive and specific, Idealist may be the place to go.

The last job search site I would recommend are remembering to use your local resources.  That includes your local newspaper (in our case the Washington Post), craigslist or your college or universities listing.  These all can be great resources for you to remember when you’re looking for a job.  Keep in mind that your dream job can still be found on craigslist.

My best advice that I could give says to just keep looking.  The market is tough right now, and often seems like there is no perfect fit.  Remember to use all the resources you have at your disposal.  And we’ll see you soon, working hand in hand in our communities with us.

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Poverty experiment is an eye opener: Experimenting with downward mobility teaches community advocates in Utah about the day to day difficulties that low-income people face, from dealing with unexpected crises, like a broken car, to just “being a little hungry all the time.”

The cost of shelter: The controversial decision to start charging people with jobs for shelter space in New York City has garnered lots of media attention over the past couple of weeks. Is this “preposterous” and “inhumane” or just a sign of the times? 

First Lady Speaks to Corporation For National and Community Service: When it comes to service, Michelle Obama has been walking the walk by volunteering all over DC, and this week, she also talked the talk at a meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service:

When I thought about the things that I cared about, the things that I was passionate about, service was always somewhere in there…So my goal was to figure out how I could not do that in my spare time, but how I could make my work service.

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Food bank grows its own: A food bank in Arizona is working on growing its own produce, with the help of a “Midwest farm boy” and a couple of wine barrels. 

Getting on the dole:  More and more students, the New York Times reports, are signing up for food stamps. At CKP we talk about students leading and serving, but what happens when your peers are the ones in need?

Sodexo Calls for Reduction in Food Waste for Earth Day: Several Sodexo schools participated in an initiative that had students weigh their leftovers in order to raise awareness about the enormity of our food waste. Next step: new Campus Kitchens?

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What really brings this to the forefront of my mind is this article.  Everyone recognizes there are a lot of bad things going in our world.  This includes people who ran Enron, created predatory mortgages and run Ponzi schemes.  What bothers me about this article is that the NY Times has gone out of their way to point out misappropriation of funds under CNCS.

Why?  Well the obvious answer is free press exists, a wrong had been done and it should be pointed out by said free press.  I don’t have a problem with that.  But why is the NY Times wasting their ink?  It’s easy to write an article about CNCS putting a sanction on the money that was going to Sacramento.  That’s probably pretty public information.  It requires little to no investigation, and honestly it probably reveals very little.  CNCS put all of the work in, discovered what was being done and stopped it.

Yet, what does the citizens of our country get?  We get a recession.  We get job loss.  But the part that really bugs me is that this article is not the only misappropriation of money happening in the US.  In fact, it’s probably nominal in comparison to all the money that’s being wasted between contractors, companies and even the government itself.

Instead we put the non-profit group that misused money out for all to see.  Why do we do this?  Maybe because the non-profit world exists as charity.  People see the contributions they make to us as charity and are mortally offended when things don’t go as exactly as we requested.  But maybe just maybe this happens in EVERY industry.  Maybe the Department of Defense should do as good of a job surveying what their contractors are doing with their money, and maybe they’d put a sanction on some groups they work with for misappropriation of funds.

Maybe if all branches of government were watching as closely as CNCS does with what happens to their money the New York Times could report on those.  But instead we’re left wondering where billions of dollars are disappearing to for the economy, the military and other government projects.  Ask yourself if $800,000 misspent over the last 3 years is something that even merits a conversation in comparison to what our government spends each year.

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Wake Forest senior Grace Johnson was recently honored with the first-ever AmeriCorps Outstanding Service Award presented by North Carolina Campus Compact. Nominated by Coordinator Melissa Duquette, Grace was eligible for the award because she contributed 300 hours of volunteer service to the Campus Kitchen–and if I know her, it was probably more.

Erin and Grace at the 2008 CKP Leadership Conference

I had the opportunity to work closely with Grace in planning for CKP’s 2008 Leadership Conference, where she served on the inaugural Student Planning Committee. Of course, I’m grateful for the insight and initiative she brought to that team: our conference was a tremendous success! But I’m also really glad that I simply had the chance to get to know Grace. Working with dedicated student leaders like her is one of the greatest perks of my job.

Are you interested in making your mark on the 2009 Leadership Conference? Email me for an application to join the Student Planning Committee.

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