What's Next?

When thinking about what I want to do after college, I stumbled across a program called FoodCorps. For those of you who don't know what it is, FoodCorps, similar to AmeriCorps, places service members in places across the country to connect kids to food and encourage kids to grow up healthy. FoodCorps' approach to this mission is based on three interventions: Knowledge, Engagement, and Access. This program teaches kids about nutrition, gets them excited about food through school gardens, and advocates for healthy, local food within school cafeterias. Because I love kids and am passionate about healthy eating, I will definitely be applying when the application goes online in January. I recently talked to Jill Zartman, a former FoodCorps Service Member in rural Arkansas, to learn more about the program and to see if this opportunity is truly an experience that would be a good fit for me. As I was worried that I do not have enough experience with farming to be responsible for an entire school garden, Jill assured me that FoodCorps trains you to be prepared. Jill majored in nutrition while attending UNC and told me that she had never stepped foot onto a farm before serving. Because most people in class are interested in food and have worked on a farm before, I figured I would share the link to the website: https://foodcorps.org/.

Other potential avenues, which are more academic, to pursue Food Studies include the graduate program at NYU in Food Studies (where Marion Nestle works) and graduate program at BU in Gastronomy (where you can take culinary classes toward your graduate degree). You should definitely check them out. I know I will be!