Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Alex graduated from Beloit College with a degree in sociology and literary studies in 2015. While at Beloit, Alex interned with a local food and clothing pantry where he coordinated a food donation partnership with his campus meal service provider. He also spent a summer managing a community garden in a predominantly low-income neighborhood through a sustainability fellowship program. For the past two years, Alex has served as a member of Feeding America’s Child Hunger Corps program at the Food Bank of Central New York in Syracuse, NY. With the food bank, Alex conducted a community needs assessment to identify gaps in child hunger services across the food bank’s service area and worked with school districts and a school based pantry program to expand federal child meal programs to address these gaps.
Field placement: Philabundance
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alex was placed with Philabundance, a Feeding America member food bank serving nine counties across southeast Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. While there, Alex worked with Philabundance’s network of member agencies, mainly food pantries and soup kitchens, to increase their advocacy capacity. He partnered with other anti-hunger and anti-poverty organizations in the area to co-host advocacy 101 presentations, and created a toolkit aimed at helping local anti-hunger organizations overcome common barriers to participating in advocacy efforts.
Policy placement: Food Research & Action Center
Washington, D.C.
Alex conducted research and created best practice guides to encourage immigrant and migrant population participation in federal child meal programs, including the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program. In addition to this work, Alex assisted with FRAC’s yearly Summer Nutrition Reports, analyzing summer lunch and breakfast participation.
Hunger Free Community Report
Philabundance Agency Advocacy Toolkit is a resource intended to enable food pantry, soup kitchen, and other direct service providers to effectively advocate on behalf of state and federal anti-hunger programs. The toolkit includes information about how to develop a strong advocacy case and how to create an organizational advocacy plan.