Support
Green Mountain Farm-to-School (GMFTS) is an environmental education non-profit that strives to connect local communities in VT with their food system through education and locally sourced, fresh food. The organization has two main focuses: food-based education and delivering healthy foods to its community members through the implementation of a food hub and food truck.
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Prior to starting my nine-week internship, I made three main goals for the summer, which are listed below:
- Further explore and learn from leadership opportunities during my internship
- Develop experience in a non-profit workplace setting in both a formal office setting and a more informal, hands-on outdoor, educational setting
- Gain expertise in creating food system-related educational materials for a wide array of audiences
During my internship, the three main projects that I was involved in were as follows:
- Managing the Charleston Elementary School and Brighton Elementary School gardens, including organizing volunteers in the community to help with this
- Assisting one of my co-workers, Meggie, with the Lunchbox Program, which is a food truck that hands out free meals to kids under 18 in three different locations in the Northeast Kingdom. I went to one of the locations each week and helped Meggie co-table the education table
- Revamping and researching information around dairy in VT, as well as globally, to create new curriculum for a unit lesson for 4th-grade classrooms throughout the Northeast Kingdom
Through my internship, I gained confidence in my leadership abilities, connected with incredible individuals from an organization that is working toward a mission I truly believe in, and dabbled in curriculum writing. With this being the first full-time internship that was at an organization that crossed my interests in both environmental studies and education, I truly was able to dive deep into an area that I know I will want to continue working in career-wise as I look toward my last year at SLU and what lies ahead for me.