October 2nd Post

As Nov 12, the date of the trip to Joseph's House, is nearby, I had more meetings with Ms Mossop and Gemma. I am responsible for designing a healthy yet affordable recipe, and I came up with apple crisp. The ingredients are relatively simple, like apples, oats, sugar, flour etc. Ms Mossop and I also reached out to local Troy food markets such as Country Hearth Baking, Honest Food Co-op and Field-Goods for food donations such as beans, veggies, bread, and meat. Honest Food Coop is very generous as they offer to give us 15lbs of sausages! We are still waiting to hear from Field Goods. We will be serving a black bean "soup" with toppings (unions, tomatoes, eggs, sausages) and rice, bread, and apple crisp for dessert. Since there are a lot of ingredients needed even with the donations from Honest Food, we will ask the Emma community for donations. I will meet with Ms Mossop on Wednesday to finalize the list of ingredients needed. I will also make a morning report speech on Friday about it (my first ever MR speech) and will collect donations on Monday (nov 7).

In the meeting last week, we also talked about starting a new recycling program at Emma. Gemma knows a program in Hannaford in which you get credits (money) for bringing a bag of cans and bottles. We hope to collect cans and bottles on the dorms by putting a recycling box on each hall, and at the end of the week, I can gather the cans and bottles into big bags. On a weekend, other volunteers and I can bring it to Hannaford and get credits. The credits will then be used for buying ingredients for Joseph House. I think this program is very meaningful as it is a mutually beneficial situation - we are helping the environment as well as getting donations for food!

Another goal that I would like to achieve is to offer volunteering opportunities that are fun and not a big commitment for students. For example, I will need volunteers to help bake the apple crisp, help collect cans and bins, and help bring to Hannaford. I hope to invite more students in helping our community throughout the year.

October 1st Post

It's been a week since I attended the World Food Prize Global Youth Institute conference in Iowa, and I am already missing it.

I learnt so much about food security, met so many amazing friends from different states, and talked with a lot of professionals (including Former President of Malawi and US secretary of agriculture). I also had the chance to present my paper which is about malnutrition in Cambodia in front of several professionals in this field! I will never forget about this memorable experience.

After this trip, I also thought of some of the things that we did in Iowa that could also be done in my Signature on a smaller scale. For example, the meal packaging event. We packed rice and beans as a group for families overseas that are struggling to eat a nutritious meal. When it is closer to Christmas, I can perhaps plan a "cookie decorating and packaging" activity, and send the cookies to Joseph's House.

Last week, I met with Ms Mossop about our first trip to Joseph's House. We will be making dinner for a group of 50 people in Joseph's House from scratch, from creating the menus to finding different sponsors for ingredients to actually cooking it at Joseph's House. I am responsible for designing a healthy dessert menu, as well as asking the Emma community and local Troy markets for food donations.

I am also in the process of designing other healthy recipes for my cookbook, and will be meeting Mr Bayer next week for more ideas.

I can't wait to get started!