Volunteer Leader Spotlight: Julie Hill

Between her hobbies of hiking, biking, camping, and painting, Julie Hill seems to find herself leading volunteers and helping others on a regular basis. Just like getting in that habitual workout at the gym, Julie needs her community fix – and the community needs her. Twice a month, this southern California native works with a team to help prep and cook food for people who don’t have easy access to fresh produce. She has become an integral part of The Nashville Food Project, a local nonprofit that seeks to provide increased access to healthy foods in homeless and working poor communities across Davidson County.“I like the Nashville Food Project because you have two steps: preparing the food and handing it out to the individuals in need. I find it very fulfilling to be able to meet the individuals that we are there to help,” says Julie. “For me, volunteering is such a rewarding experience; I get the benefits of helping others and meeting great people who enjoy giving back to the community.”

She’s been working with The Nashville Food Project as a Volunteer Leader since September 2012, but has been an active Hands On Nashville volunteer since 2009. From a very young age, Julie was taught that helping her community was part of normal life. She continues to value the opportunity to help out her community and encourage those around her to do the same.

Julie has found Hands On Nashville to be a wonderful place to get connected. “By offering such a great website and partnerships, and the amazing people, Hands On Nashville makes volunteering truly a no-hassle and thoroughly enjoyable experience.”

Are you looking to get involved with The Nashville Food Project like Julie?
➢ Click here to see a list of upcoming opportunities and sign up.

Volunteer Leader Spotlight: Sarah Petschonek

Guest post by Sarah Petschonek-
This post originally appeared on http://confessionsofavolunteer.com

I lived in Nashville for about a year and when I first moved there, I knew I wanted to spend a good bit of time volunteering and learning about my new city. Through the extensive calendar at Hands On Nashville, I learned about an organization called The Nashville Food Project, which quickly became one of my favorite volunteer opportunities.

The Nashville Food Project is designed to create healthy food and deliver it by truck to the low-income areas of Nashville to ensure that everyone, regardless of their income, has access to a nutritious meal. The food they turn out of that tiny kitchen is amazing – like summer stir fry with beef or vegetarian lasagna. From the minute I walked into their offices I was hooked!

My shelf at The Nashville Food Project

There was fresh produce on every shelf and everything was incredibly well organized. It was clear that the team had fully embraced the idea of providing a rewarding and seamless experience for their volunteers. After a couple of times of volunteering, one of the project leaders suggested that I look into becoming a volunteer leader myself so that The Nashville Food Project, in cooperation with Hands On Nashville, could offer more meals each month. After a little arm twisting (ok, definitely no arm twisting required), I signed up to run the project on the fourth Sunday of every month for six months. Two months in, I moved back to Memphis, but I love the project so much that I continue to drive to Nashville each month to work with the project. If my count is correct, Day 25 of Mission Memphis marks my fifth time to lead a group for the Nashville Food Project.

The Nashville Food Project approach

This incredible project is housed in a small, unassuming building in the corner of a church parking lot. When I walk in for the project, there is a row of clipboards and one has my name and the date for the delivery. On a nearby shelf, another sheet displays what I’m supposed to prepare and take for the trip that day, and tells me the places we’ll be visiting.

About 70-80% of the food served is hot (like the veggie lasagna mentioned above), but on the weekend shifts we stick to sandwiches and fruit. Shortly after I get there, the volunteers start to show up to prep the sandwiches for the trip, which usually involves making 60-80 turkey sandwiches. One of the volunteers, Brittany, is there consistently each time I’m working, despite the fact that she is working two jobs and putting herself through school. While you can’t see all the sandwiches in this picture, the wonderful volunteers assembled 60 sandwiches for the delivery.

Volunteers Tram Giroir, Brittany Orpurt, Lisa Freeman

Generally, I experience a volunteer opportunity from the perspective of the volunteer, rather than the volunteer coordinator. This project is one of the few instances where I feel like the volunteer experience is up to me – that it’s my responsibility to make sure that each volunteer feels valued and appreciated. It always makes me a little nervous because I put a lot of pressure on myself to provide a meaningful experience. It’s nerve-racking because you never know who is going to show up (or if they’re going to show up), and most of the people I interact with are new to the project. When we get new volunteers, I make an effort to point out the map wall (as I call it), which highlights the different areas served by the project and includes a brief description of each location.

Map wall at The Nashville Food Project headquarters

When we have it, I also like to point out all the fresh produce that’s donated (hundreds of pounds) or grown in the garden out back.

Homegrown and gleaned produce at The Nashville Food Project

Before we leave, we take a few minutes to talk about guidelines for the volunteers and what to expect from the experience. I explain that most people will be very gracious and friendly, but sometimes people are grumpy and that’s ok. I tell them that I’ve never had any trouble on one of the deliveries and that it’s likely to be a rewarding experience, but sometimes people can be unpredictable and if anyone feels uncomfortable that we’ll leave. I just want to make sure that everyone feels as prepared and comfortable as possible especially if this will be their first client-facing experience in the area of hunger and poverty.

After prepping the sandwiches and covering the basics, we grab the fruit, hardboiled eggs, and any special produce and load up one of the two trucks for delivery.

Ready to roll with The Nashville Food Project truck

Once we get to the site, we’ll set up an assembly line to hand out the food, which on this run included turkey sandwiches, string cheese, apples and oranges, and hardboiled eggs.

Lisa Freeman, Adam Anghilnate, and Jessica Summers assembling a bag of food

Usually we also take bananas and those tend to be the most popular. I quickly learned that the soft foods tend to go quickly because many of the people who receive food might be missing most or all of their teeth. The first time I realized this I was shocked – not because their teeth were missing, but because it was so hard to tell! Many people alter the way they talk in an effort to hide their mouth. I’ve had entire conversations without realizing that someone was missing their teeth.

One of the many amazing things about this project is that I get the opportunity to visit the same sites each month, which gives me the opportunity to build relationships with the people we serve and to learn their stories. For example, one of our regular characters is Jack – an overweight Chihuahua who rides around contently in his owner’s wheelchair. Jack’s owner has a cowboy hat and a long beard and he seems happy to let Jack steal the show. I’ve seen them on every trip. Everyone knows him, but no one knows his real name. We all call him “Jack’s owner” and he typically peppers us with jokes on our visits.

The other incredible thing is what the experience does for the volunteers. When we leave from the church parking lot, everyone is pretty quiet, because they’re strangers to one another. So, I tend to run my mouth and ask everyone lots of questions to get them talking. On the ride home, my poor emcee skills are thankfully not needed – everyone talks about their common experience and swaps stories about the trip. The whole process is designed to build community in more ways than one.

I love this project for many reasons. I think there are two main things that really got me hooked in the first place. I love the idea that everyone is deserving of a good, nutritious meal rather than the scraps and cheapest food available. Everything that comes out of the kitchen at The Nashville Food Project is thoughtfully prepared to be good! It sends the message that we’re all equal and that everyone is worth the extra effort necessary to offer wholesome food. Second, this is a wonderful experience for volunteers because it gives you the opportunity to interact with the clients and it challenges your perception of what poverty looks like. It’s a rewarding experience for everyone involved. I wish I could duplicate this group and drop one in every city.

I could go on about this project forever. I love The Nashville Food Project. But instead, I’ll leave you with my favorite parting words from the Executive Director of The Nashville Food Project, Tallu Quinn:

“The daily story of the meals we serve reminds us of what we can do with that excess, of how we can reconfigure our lives with imagination so that we might be more concerned with others around us having enough than with making sure we ourselves have plenty.”

Interested in volunteering at The Nashville Food Project with Sarah? 
> View upcoming opportunities and sign up.

Notes from the Farm: Welcoming fall, swings, & students

By Josh Corlew, HON Urban Agriculture Program Manager -

It was an amazing first summer at the Hands On Nashville Urban Farm! We harvested 600+ pounds of vegetables and had more than 2,000 volunteers pitch in to transform these five empty lots of flood plain into food producing space where much learning,discovery, and outdoor fun has taken place.

The Farm during peak summer harvest.

Thank you to everyone who has given their time, energy, support, and enthusiasm to make this a successful first year for the Farm! Your volunteerism makes it possible for us to grow healthy food that is donated to nonprofits that serve families in need.

But summer is over, and fall is in the air (and the ground as well). The summer crops of squash, cucumbers, beans, corn, and watermelon are gone. The tomatoes and peppers are nearing the end of their productivity. Our newly leafed out trees are beginning their hibernation process.

Fall, however, brings its own excitement. The change of the weather is invigorating, both to our volunteers who are eager to get warmed up by getting to work, as well as some of our fall crops. We have lots of herbs and flowers that are loving the cooler weather, and our kale has been pruned back and is really enjoying the reprieve from pesky bugs that this time of year brings.

Spinach seedlings pop their heads out of the soil.

We’ve also recently planted quite a bit of spinach and lettuce in some of the garden rows where squash, corn, and beans used to thrive. Now they’re just starting to pop up and leaf out. If all goes well, we’ll be in for a lot of spinach through the winter. We’ve also begun work on the new garden plot, preparing it for a very productive spring by starting some cover crops (these will fill the soil with beneficial nutrients). Next spring we plan on doubling the amount of growing space that we had this year.

Kids from Head Middle Magnet and West End Middle spent part of their fall intercession time at the Farm on Monday.

Fall also means school is back in session. This week we’ve had some great groups of Metro Nashville Public Schools students who volunteered at the Farm as part of their fall intercession and our Hands On Fall Break volunteer opportunities with the HON VolunTEEN Program. In addition to helping turn compost and harvest vegetables, the kids learned how compost works (it gets up to 160 degrees!), why drinks full of sugar aren’t good for our bodies, and how to choose healthier alternatives. A seventh grader named Ricky said he wished he could come to the Farm every day… maybe we have a future farmer in our midst!

VolunTEEN volunteers harvested all these sweet potatoes today!!

We got this awesome thank-you card from the West End Middle students!

If you’ve been by the Farm in a few weeks, you probably noticed our amazing new swings. We were very fortunate to have employees from Molex volunteered last month to make the swings and create some new compost bins. Their enthusiastic volunteerism will help make the farm more productive and enjoyable. The swings are made from beautiful cedar wood, and next spring we’ll have food vines growing up the trellised sides, adding to the food grown at the Farm. We have great hopes for those swings being covered in grapes, muscadines, kiwis, blackberries, raspberries, and all manner of other tasty treats.

Also, we were honored to be featured in Nashville Public Television’s Volunteer Gardener show, which aired this week. Check it out below!

I hope you’ll come down and enjoy the space sometime soon, and if you’d like to volunteer with us this fall, check out our volunteer opportunities here!

Josh Corlew is Hands On Nashville’s Urban Agriculture Program Manager. He oversees the organization’s efforts to engage volunteers in service opportunities that empower them to gain gardening skills, learn about healthy eating choices, and help address our city’s food access issues. An AmeriCorps alumnus, Josh also has a secret past life as a Trekkie (he’s a big fan of the TV series Star Trek, for the uninitiated among us), and he has been known to participate in death-defying canoe trips.

Brussels Sprouts & Idealistic Youth

It’s been an incredible year for the Hands On Nashville VolunTEEN Program, thanks to the youth volunteers who have hammered, dug, collected, sorted, planted, taught, harvested, built, and cooked their way through a year of service that has left the Middle Tennessee community a better place. Here are a few numbers to put it all in perspective:

• 2,352 youth participated in service opportunities in 2011
• 10,128 hours of service completed
• 726 of the volunteers served as mentors to at-risk youth via Backfield in Motion; HON-managed programs related to the arts, health, and food security at Bethlehem Centers, Safe Haven Family Shelter, Fannie Battle Day Home, Friends Life, Edgehill Center, Renewal House, McIver Center, Salvation Army, and St. Luke’s.
• 1,122 youth volunteers participated in HON’s sustainable food program, working at multiple urban garden locations at the above-mentioned nonprofits.

Wow. We are in awe, and we know the Nashville community is, too.

HON launched a youth urban gardening initiative this year, and one of the gardens where lots of growing took place (of vegetables AND minds) was Bethlehem Centers. The impressive garden was established in March by HON youth volunteers, and has become a focal point of Nashville urban garden tours and media stories. One of our favorite moments of the growing season was when HON volunteers and Bethlehem Centers youth discovered with delight what Brussels sprouts look like growing on the stalk. Almost all of us have been surprised when we learned how a certain kind of food looks before it lands on our plate (um, do you remember discovering that pickles are actually CUCUMBERS? – yes, most of us have had that moment of shock and awe).

One parent put it very well in an e-mail to us, after picking up her son from one of our youth gardening workshops this summer:

When I picked up my son today, I expected to hear exhausted moans… Instead, I got an excited lecture on the process of creating garden beds, and the remarkable biochemistry of mushrooms, and kale-the-miracle-plant. The heat and the blisters took a back-seat to the learning and the satisfaction of doing some good. Thanks for the opportunity! He’ll be back tomorrow am.

Thank YOU, parents, for supporting your children in volunteerism. And an extra special thanks to HON youth volunteers for making this year so memorable and for “Being the Change.” We can’t wait to tackle more amazing projects with you in 2012! (P.S. – A great way to find out what’s going on with the VolunTEEN Program is by following the HON VolunTEEN Facebook page).

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The Power of Space

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau
When the folks at DaVita Kidney Care approached us about coordinating a service day for their employees during the company’s conference in Nashville, we landed on sprucing up the building that houses East Nashville Cooperative Ministry (ENCM). It was clear to DaVita that this small-but-mighty East Nashville nonprofit impacts a lot of lives, and that the building where it does so much good work – helping the elderly, poor, disabled, unemployed, and disadvantaged with emergency food assistance and empowering community wellbeing through food security – didn’t quite reflect the beauty and potential of its work. As we dug into the needs of the facility, it became clear that the building would need a complete renovation. DaVita (based in Denver, Colorado) and the Nashville community stepped up to the challenge.

For the past few days, volunteers from the community have been working through the sunshine and the rain to tear down walls, set fence posts, build scaffolding, and more. Tomorrow, 180 DaVita employees will descend on the small building on Gallatin Road to paint an exterior mural on the side of the building, construct fences and arbors for the vegetable garden, build indoor and outdoor tables, paint and install shelving, paint interior walls, and build planters. Dozens of community members will continue to volunteer over the next few days to complete the project. And on Monday, after Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee restocks its food pantry with staple food items and produce,  East Nashville Cooperative Ministry will unveil their renovated facility – a space that will enable the organization to meet the rapidly increasing demand for emergency food assistance, provide food education to the community, engage more volunteers, and improve the curb appeal of the neighborhood.

As ENCM executive director Alan Murdock says in the news release that went out yesterday, “The renovation will not only help expand our services and volunteer programs, but it will also put the agency in a position to provide more healthy food choices, and expanded gardening and cooking education to our clients and the community on a more consistent basis.” While a building certainly isn’t everything, the space within which ENCM operates will be forever changed after this week. All thanks to the vision of caring businesses and Nashville volunteers. And that’s a powerful thing.

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Youth Volunteers to Impact Poverty Through “Hunger Banquet” Service and Learning Event

On Saturday, November 5, Nashville youth ages 11 to 18 are invited to experience firsthand the disparities that exist between the developed and developing worlds by participating in HON’s Hunger Banquet, presented by Qdoba. Participants will be divided at random into high-, middle- and low-income groups representing the demographic divisions across the world, and then fed according to socioeconomic class in order to help them understand the extent of poverty and hunger worldwide. After the meal, youth will work with Second Harvest Food Bank to sort nonperishable food donations and help feed hungry Tennesseans. This food sorting project becomes even more meaningful because volunteers gain a new perspective on global hunger and poverty during the Hunger Banquet. If you’re ready to learn about hunger issues facing millions of people, and want to be part of the solution, sign up here to be one of the 65 youth volunteers who will make a difference during the holiday season.  Space is limited.

HON is proud to partner with Qdoba and their five area locations to provide food for the Hunger Banquet.