Dave

I am originally from New Jersey.  I moved to Michigan with the rest of my family when I was eleven.  After graduating from college with a degree in history, I moved to Washington DC, where I worked as a culinary assistant in a cooking school, an intern in Congress and a variety of other jobs.  After living in DC for two years, I joined AmeriCorps VISTA and became the emergency food pantry coordinator for the Martha O’Bryan Center, a community center in the heart of Cayce Place, Nashville’s largest housing project and one of Nashville’s food deserts.  Over the course of my year of service, I became involved in a number of different aspects of the food system, with an emphasis on food security and food justice.  The most difficult part of my job was to deny people food boxes.  My work at the Martha O’Bryan Center was motivating and taught me a great deal about inequality in the United States.  After my year of service ended, I returned to Michigan, where I studied community organizing part time at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work and volunteered with the Detroit Community Grocery Store Coalition, Growing Hope Urban Farm and Food Gatherers.  I wish to continue working toward solutions to poverty, hunger and other food security related issues in the hope of developing coherent programs of education, advocacy and collaboration with a focus on sustainability.  I am thrilled to be part of the 2011 cohort at the Student Organic Farm.  I plan on using what I learn at the Student Organic Farm to become a food systems educator in Metro Detroit.