Week of October 19-25

Hello All!

I am not sure if we had to write this week and if so I am sorry I did not. I totally forgot with getting ready for the Mid-South Conference. Which has been pretty fun so far.

I think that the Farmers Market went AMAZING!!! I was totally pleased and excited. Plus I had lots of fun. This is definitely something that should be done again. There was a considerable amount of excellent feed back.

I have the info to make thank you cards for all things donated. I will get on that ASAP and will have them to their respective student to hand deliver to the correct person.

I think that is all I have for now.

erica

Food Day - so funderful!

Yesterday was so AMAZING! I think if we could get a grade on yesterday, it'd be an A+ ..I knew it would be fantastic (although I was also terrified everything would go wrong) but experiencing it is different.

I uploaded the photos Dr. Burley took from the camera to the Reconnect facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.210347559037454&type=1

Check it out!  And we're also expecting some snazzy photos from my friend Brennan with his snazzy camera.

I counted 36 visual petitions. I didn't expect we'd get so many, so that's awesome. This was a great way to put faces to some of the signatures we got and display some of the many different reasons for getting more real food!

So the farmers said they made enough money to keep doing this again at our school.. Darnella emailed me too to thank us for having them too and also hopes we get to do it again. I definitely think we should schedule a meeting with the farmers some time and talk about making this a monthly thing.

Speaking of that, Tim and I went to talk to three Environmental management students (Atsuko, Chris, Rebecca) about having them do their final project on something to help us with the Real Food Challenge. That went pretty well. They were already thinking of putting a business plan together to organize a farmer's market, but we had already done that. Dr. Moreou told them that he didn't think an on-campus farmers market would be successful and that an off-campus one might be better, but that was before he found out how well we did. Tim and I said that we would give them all of our data from Food day (survey results, pictures, etc.) and tell them what we discussed in the next class about the strengths/weaknesses, so that they could work on putting together a floor plan/business plan for future farmers markets!
How does that sound to you all? I really wanted them to help us with the Real Food Challenge calculator, but that's really a full-time job, and it's so late in the semester.

Also, I forgot to email the organizations that Danaty sent me - eep! Sorry about that! I shall email them tonight, with a brief blurb of how successful Food Day was.

I'm sure there's probably going to be more that I failed to mention.. we can talk in class! It was so exciting to see so many students who were so receptive to this.

I want to thank you ALL for being such a huge help in this project! We were really successful, and it wouldn't have been nearly this good without all of your help, time, commitment, and great ideas. I feel like we really learned a lot in this class.

Thank you so much!!

-- Bonnie

Food Day Good Day

Events leading up to food day included getting the E-Mail to Renee Abadie and procuring bags from the Winn Dixie.
After arriving and setting up I was concerned that we wouldn't attract much attention but those feelings would be short lived. It started slow but soon the buzz was out. I was very excited to see the people enjoying their fresh vegatables cooked while they waited.
My greatest source of enjoyment came through speaking with Ben who seemed to be the patriarch of the group. I think what attracted me to him was his cool and confident demeanor. A new place, new people, not knowing what to expect and Ben was thriving. It wasn't untill his daughter allerted him that it was time for his conference call that I realized just how saavy this farmer from Petal Mississippi really was. When Ben stepped away I carried on the conversation with his daughter. I asked if she had heard of the Blair Grocery and I tried to explain what I was talking about. She rattled off about six or seven schools in New Orleans and when I asked her if they provided produce to them she informed me that they had in fact created urban gardens and educational components to accompany them. I had a very eye opening experience Thank You

Thank You Cards and Donations!

Hello everyone!

The info you need to keep track of if you receive donations:

--Name of Place (store and town Example: Winn Dixie, Slidell)
--Name of Person who helped you out.
--Name of Manager
--Name of product(s) donated along with how many donated. (Example: Reusable Bags, 12)

Remember, the more information I have the more personal and less general I can make the thank you cards. Thanks for all the help!

Erica

This week

Sorry all. I was under the weather yesterday and not functional.

I finished up the pamphlet and ordered 300 copies from Tommy at Xpress. Went to the Reconnect meeting last night. I was kinda loopy, but Bonnie said I reminded everyone to wear green shirts and I showed them the pamphlet and the signs.

While I was there I ran into Eric Johnson, the library director. He is very excited about the farmers market, but had the date and times messed up. His staff is putting up one of our big signs behind the glass where the back of the elevators are. He also asked me to forward him a flier so he would have the dates/times right. Also said he is going to forward it to his entire staff (that is a lot of people).

Asked about getting bags from Best Buy. Was told that the organization requesting the bags has to fill out a C503I (not 100% on that) to show that the org is not going to resell them for profit.

I am willing to do whatever for Monday. Know I will meet everyone at 9am to set up. After that I can talk about the project to interested parties, help man a table, or whatever.

Organizations and Bags

Hi all,

I was having computer troubles, but that now all seems to be solved. I sent bonnie the e-mail list for the organizations. I also am still working on bags for the farmers market. I was walking through a salvage store and made a discovery of a lifetime. I will bring it to class tonight and get everyone's opinion.
As far as jobs for the event, I believe that I would do well with the tagging of bags that need to be held and picked up after classes. I am also willing to do anything else that needs to be done.

Week of October 12th-18th

On Monday, Oct. 17th I was able to give the presentation to Dr. Winter's theatre history class. It went really well, and I had lots of great feedback from them about. One student suggested having a group of us shell peas if the farmers bring some, but I don't think they are bringing any.

On Tuesday, Oct. 18th I also visited two of Dr. Winter's acting classes. Both classes brought a lot of energy and passion to the presentation, and the upper-level acting class gave me 12 signatures with every single person in the class checking the "Yes, I want to volunteer with the campaign" box!!! Also, I stopped and talked to a student that was in a class I previously gave a presentation in. He is a newly elected Freshmen Senator for SGA, so I think we may have a good contact with him for the future of the RFC and Reconnect. Another quick note, one of the DJs on the radio did our Farmers Market PSA and she told me she gave me a shout out for being enthuastic and passionate during the presentation she heard. Nothing can compare to the feeling of being able to convey a message to others and have them say you did a good job. I also attended the Reconnect Meeting Tuesday and met the members we will be working with on Monday. They were all very awesome, passionate people, and I'm glad we can help such a worthwhile group. Bonnie dicussed what needed to be done, and I will bring lots of petitions for walk-up students to sign.


I still haven't heard from Phi Mu's president, so I think it may be time for me to email her tomorrow.

For later this week and the Farmers Market: I have two presentations to give Wed. to Mr. Chauvin's history classes and two to give on Thurs. to Dr. Kleiner's Soc classes. That will give me 7 presentations completed for this week. On Monday, I will be able to help out all day until 2pm when I have me education class, but I can come back at 3pm and watch purchased food or whatever I'm needed to do. I cancelled my class to teach at 3:30, but I will have a sign-up sheet for them, because their assignment is to visit the Farmers Market (hehe). Lastly, we need to get a clipboard for the petitions, or we could just put it on one of the tables. We also need to have pens. I guess we plan on decorating around 9am on Monday, so I don't mind going and putting yard signs in the ground before the farmers market begins especially around Freshmen parking area.