New Gig!
I know I've been mostly absent the last several months, but I have big news...I got a new job! After being downsized to 1/2-time without benes, I am scheduled to begin a new job at Vanderbilt University with the Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee on March 24! My job is to work with faith based groups to build support to bring grocery stores to Nashville's food deserts, teach about nutrition, and help combat childhood obesity. There's more to it than that, but those are the basics.
I feel incredibly luck to have found something so entirely perfect for me and I can't tell you how excited I am to start.
Had to share!
Why are the food deserts food deserts in the first place?
Email coming soon. x
I don't mean to sound like a neoliberal here, or even like a Republican. If significant numbers of people don't have access to good food and the economics of changing that situation don't make sense from the retailers' point of view, I'd favor public subsidy of supermarkets in those neighborhoods, just like I favor the existence of post offices even in towns where the revenues from mail delivery fall short of costs. I just wonder what the current dynamics of the problem are, in terms of economic forces.
In the meantime, we're going to work on getting community gardens started, and the program I'm working for is also working with local farmers. There's also a big part of this that deals with the issue of poverty. Very multi-faceted.
Go community gardens! Hooray!
I've been learning a LOT this week about what creates a food desert, what I'll be working on with FSP, and what it means to create a coalition of people who have been working on this issue for more years than I've been alive. The problem of food insecurity and lack of healthy foods is endemic to the neighborhoods in question, and the residents are eager for change.
Today I had my official headshot taken (which I don't particularly like), and sat in on an NPR interview with my boss (I'm taking the reporter and 2 community activists on a tour of one of the food deserts on Sunday). This job is about to be crazy high-profile and I have to admit I'm a bit nervous. Of course, it's not quite the same as climbing onto a speaker at the Malbert and taking the mic to welcome everyone to the party! Ha ha.
Will keep y'all posted, but if you sign up for the <a href=http://www.foodsecuritypartners.org> e-newsletter</a?> you'll keep up to date on what I'm working on...which is called Re/Storing Nashville.