Amanda Qadado, a.k.a. “Q”
March 3, 2015- Posted by Amanda Qadado, an AmeriCorps VISTA member who serves with the VT Engage office on our Community Associates Program.
Cognitive Dissonance. Essentially it is the stress endured when one’s “real self” falls short of his or her “ideal self.” New years, new semesters, a birthday—what a perfect time to re-invent yourself and to create new goals.
Until, of course, after the first round of exams when you realize that a 4.0 simply isn’t possible and you push that goal off until the next semester.
Well, I have run out of semesters (at least for undergrad), so the next opportunity came to me when I began my work as an AmeriCorps VISTA through the VT Engage network.
As an undergrad, I was a sister of Chi Delta Alpha, Virginia Tech’s all-female service sorority. Through my experience with XDA, I was able to volunteer with efforts such as Micah’s Backpack, Feeding America, and the Giving Tree Food Pantry.
The AmeriCorps VISTA site I applied for focused on food insecurity and homeless issues in the New River Valley. I was excited to continue some of my work with hunger relief, especially because it allowed me to stay in Blacksburg.
I was nowhere near ready to leave Blacksburg after graduation, so I jumped at one of the first opportunities to stay. I was so thrilled to stay that I almost immediately said yes, without learning many of the rules of AmeriCorps life (but more on that later.)
A term of service with AmeriCorps lasts one year. During your year, you work to implement a sustainable program that will be so effective, it eventually will not need a VISTA to run it. I knew I was not going to save the world in this year, but my ideals did not fall much short of that.
After spending the initial weeks of my service learning about the severity of poverty in the New River Valley, I was inspired to truly make an impact on this population.
The number of efforts in the New River Valley that targeted hunger issues was eye-opening. I spent my first few months attempting to educate the student population on how many of our neighbors are affected by hunger and poverty.
Q serves at a food pantry with Chi Delta Alpha.
I focused on hunger because even though I had previously volunteered with efforts targeting food insecurity, I was still oblivious to the depth of the problem in our area.
I was still unaware 1 in 8 people in Virginia struggle with hunger (Feeding America, 2015).
I dubbed September “A Call to Action” and opened up a multitude of volunteer and learning opportunities, from packing meals for kids through Micah’s Backpack to a food drive that brought nearly 500 pounds of food to a local food pantry.
I used social media to get the word out, and was featured in a Collegiate Times article.
I researched student groups that focus on sustainability and service, such as the Sustainable Food Corps, and encouraged their members to participate. Each week, I connected a group of service-learning students with hunger-related volunteer projects.
Throughout the month, students had the opportunity to look at several different approaches to hunger relief:
• Micah’s Backpack allowed them to help pack a weekend’s worth of meals for almost 300 children in Montgomery County who qualify for the free lunch program.
• The Giving Tree Food Pantry partnered students with a client, and then walk through the pantry with them, helping with food selection.
• At Feeding America, they helped sort through donated food that would service over 100,000 individuals in southwest Virginia.
I thought I was “making a difference”, until the end of the fall semester. I found myself in a service-learning class as the professor lead a discussion on poverty issues.
I spent the next 15 minutes standing at the front of that class, listening to students discuss how anyone on food stamps was “abusing the system” and needed to just “go out and find work”, as if it was just laziness that kept them impoverished. The professor caught on to the negative angle the conversation was taking, and quickly ended it before I could interject.
What I’m assuming that class did not know is that I am currently on food stamps; I would have loved to watch their reaction to learning this. There is a reason I prefer to use the self-checkout at grocery stores.
There is a reason I know at what grocery stores you have to verbally tell the cashier you are using an EBT card so he or she can press a different button on the register.
The stigma of receiving benefits like food stamps is widespread. Part of taking on a year of service with AmeriCorps is accepting a pay rate that is comparable to the relative poverty level—and I am not allowed to seek further employment. I am bound by the monthly stipend that allows me to pay my rent and bills, with not much wiggle room.
Students prepare a meal at Roanoke Rescue Mission.
Because of this, many AmeriCorps apply for food stamps. Going into my year of service, I hoped that the positive impact of the work I would be doing would offset the stress brought on by my financial constraints.
Halfway through my year of service, there I stood at the front of that classroom, feeling defeated, disappointed, and poor.
I spent the holiday season wondering how I could make the last months of my service year meaningful. How was I going to reach my goals in just four months? How would I ensure I ended on a positive note?
Throughout my service, there had been a lot of talk in the VT Engage office about bringing a food diversion program to Virginia Tech.
A food diversion program takes food that would normally be thrown out– only because too much was prepared or there were fewer customers then anticipated that day– and re-distributes it to hunger relief organizations.
This program fit the sustainability component of my service year description, had the benefit of getting students involved in the process of food recovery, and had the potential to have a lasting impact, long after I had finished my year.
But, I was hesitant to pursue the idea, as the VISTA before me spent a lot of her year knocking on doors to make the idea a reality, only to be turned away.
Dining Services at Virginia Tech is an outstanding, organized system and I feared there might be reservations about me bringing something new to an already well-run machine.
Here’s the thing though: I was unaware there were already numerous food diversion efforts in place in a number of dining halls.
All it took was one phone call to the right person in Dining Services, and there I was, sitting in Dietrick Hall making plans to send student volunteers to the kitchens to help with their existing diversion process.
We are still working on the details of this pilot program, but essentially, we want to implement a system where students will help collect and package diverted food that will help get food to people in our community who need it.
Amanda votes for Virginia Tech’s Campus Kitchen video.
Our hope is that we will partner with the Campus Kitchens Project on this initiative. Campus Kitchens is a national organization that promotes students getting involved combating food waste and hunger.
Students in collegiate chapters across the nation collect surplus food from on-campus dining halls and help transform it to healthy meals that are distributed to food insecure individuals in the area.
We’re currently competing with three other schools to win a grant to kick off our program. Vote for our video every day until Monday, March 9 at noon!
Though this initiative is still in the early stages, I sit here writing this blog post rekindled with the excitement I had back in May.
Although my term of service will end in less than three months, my time serving Blacksburg is nowhere near over.
Amanda “Q” Qadado holds a B.S. in psychology from Virginia Tech and is from Sterling, Virginia. She would be super pumped if you voted for our Campus Kitchen video every day until 3/9!