Initial Post: Reflecting on the Opportunity to Serve

(Accessed from www.foodchainlex.org)

The FoodChain

          When first seeing that I was assigned When first putting the FoodChain down as one of my hopeful options for the service learning in CIS 112, I did not know a whole lot about the organization. The extent from what I knew came directly from the Google document that was provided for all the different organizations and all the different options with the summary of what volunteering would look like for each place. FoodChain drew my eye right off the bat with its initiative and goal to cultivate community within a local area by serving those around them by displaying an efficient, responsible, and eco-friendly way to make food. The concept of simply meeting an immediate, specific need of the people yet still  Being from Lexington, the idea serving those in the inner city and simply meeting the physical, immediate needs of local people while at the same time inspiring and enabling through education on these great food systems was something that made me want to get involved an help in whatever way I could. To me, its the whole concept of give a man a fish you feed him for the day, but teach him how to fish and he no longer has to go hungry if he chooses. Although it is a simplified example, I feel like FoodChain is accomplishing both by meeting initial physical needs with food, but also providing the opportunity for people to learn what it looks like to possibly provide food for themselves if they have the desire too. This is why for me, although technically this "service-learning" is required through CIS 112, I do not view it as a task I "have" to go do, but rather something I want to go be apart of. And honestly, I count it a privilege of working with such a great organization with such applaudable goals. So I am excited to get started and learn to say the least! But enough about me, lets focus on this amazing organization and what they offer.  FoodChain states their purpose simply, yet beautifully, “Our farm demonstrates the most cutting edge, resource conserving techniques in agriculture to inner city residents, inspiring them to reconsider ways in which they can be involved in the cultivation of fresh food. We give people many ways to access and contribute to a healthy, local, and economically diverse food system, whether it be production through farming, gathering of imperfect produce, food processing, marketing, or education. Altogether, we demonstrate community empowerment through shared food, striving towards a more resilient local economy.” After doing more research, I am completely behind this organization and love what they stand for. I am very excited to get started and get involved.  

                                                                                 (Accessed from www.foodchainlex.org)

           

           So now the question moving forward in volunteering and serving is what can I learn from FoodChain. On doing more in depth research on things past their general purpose, I took a look at what volunteering might look like and the details of the FoodChain’s daily procedures. When looking at this, I learned a lot of knew things that I did not know about what their work looks like everyday. Something extremely interesting that I learned is how their food systems actually work. FoodChain uses an indoor aquaponics farm to utilize an efficient way to produce food. Aquaponics essentially stems from two industries, hydroponics which is growing plants without soil, and aquaculture, which is farming fish. FoodChain’s goal is to combine these two to create sustainable agriculture to produce food for the community. The actual process that takes place to do this I found very fascinating. Essentially and in a simplified version they have many fish tanks and thousands of plants. They take the waste from the tilapia in the fish tank to then in turn put on the plants for a natural fertilizer to then create fresh water for the fish and sustainable fertilizer for the plants to produce the healthy food. I honestly think this is awesome! That is just one thing that I have learned from my research, but I plan to learn much more by going and actually being apart of the process and volunteering. One thing I hope to learn from volunteering is what it looks like to connect these local people with sustainable food sources while also learning how to educate them on this issue. With the presented opportunity to get involved with such a good cause and serve people while learning through the process is exactly why the FoodChain was one of my top choices.