FSA hosts events for Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week

This week has been Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, and the Food Security Advocates have been holding events this week to address food insecurity on campus and in the community. This week, they have held a farm-to-table potluck dinner on Nov. 12, a food forest workshop on Nov. 15, and a Student Association (SA) food drive in which all SA-funded organizations are encouraged to donate non-perishable food. 

On Friday, Nov. 18, FSA co-chair and junior business administration major Jocelyn Haines is set to give a panel presentation on her work with the Foundation for Sustainable Community Development Jinja-Uganda (FSD) and the Kakira Outgrowers Rural Development Fund (KORA). The discussion will highlight ways that Haines and her ambassadorship with FSD and KORA have made a difference on the frontlines of hunger and food insecurity. 

Haines spent last summer working in Uganda, Africa alongside FSD and KORA in order to provide solutions to hunger in the developing country. She worked with locals to implement changes to cooking and gardening that will benefit both the environment and the communities she worked and lived in. 

Haines said, “This summer, my project was split into two parts. I went to two different primary schools in Uganda, and in one of them I helped them implement an energy saving stove. It helps reduce the amount of wood that's needed, so it helps combat deforestation, which is a major issue. It cooks the food much quicker, it’s hotter, and it’s cleaner and doesn’t emit as much smoke so it’s a much healthier environment for them to cook in. The other half of the project was when I went to another school and helped them re-implement their gardening program.” 

Gardening, Haines explained, was built into their school’s curriculum but was discontinued due to the COVID pandemic. The school was also home to a large special needs education program, and Haines helped integrate the gardening work into their vocational skills curriculum. 

Haines described her work in Uganda as fulfilling in both a personal and professional sense: “I learned so much. I had an absolutely amazing summer in Uganda,” she said. “I learned a lot about the culture and about what it's like to work in sustainable community development. I think it was really important to me to be able to go to someplace that is considered more like the frontlines of sustainable development. We learn about that a lot here in the global north, but I feel like the perspectives of the people that are actually implementing this are much different. And it was just overall a great experience that I think anybody who was interested in going into the realm of international or sustainability work should look into.”

Haines said that she hopes the upcoming panel discussion will be a chance for a two-way exchange of knowledge and perspective, as well as an example of the kind of internships and opportunities available to sustainability students at Geneseo. 

“I really want this to be a two-way exchange of knowledge, experience, and perspectives. This is gonna be mostly around the topic of how we engage in sustainable community development. I really wanted to get perspectives from my supervisors and share that with the broader community here because I feel like I learned so much from them over this summer in Uganda.”

Applications for volunteer work abroad with FSD have closed, but Haines encouraged any students to become involved in sustainability and hunger awareness work wherever possible. She said that she does plan to study abroad again next summer and continue her work with the FSA combating food insecurity here in Geneseo. Interested students can find more information on the FSA page on the SUNY Geneseo website.