Bella Anam’s

Sophomore Inspire Week (SIW) is a week-long experience to go out into the community and participate in a service project that has meaning to you. 

I chose Manna Soup Kitchen, an organization that not only offers gourmet food to those in need (whether homeless or  penniless, etc.), but also a wide array of documentation and application services. We chose to help with the Backpack Program, this program allows students who don't have food over the weekends to bring home a bag of non-perishable food items to be able to eat without having meals from school. This program was less successful than usual, Manna has enough to feed 400 students, yet they were only serving 200. 

So we interviewed roughly 8 schools in the area who participate or have participated in this program, and got a lot of data to how this program can improve so that it can be more applicable. We discovered a large stigma surrounding food-insecurity and poverty, which may be why so few have been using the services of this program. So we created a big summary of the changes we believe Manna can make to improve this program, and sent it to them to review. 

It was complex and mental labor intensive, but confirmed my ability to solve complex issues.