My CAS project is the “Emerald Campus Food Fighters”, a group that will take

volunteers from the EC community to help at different food pantry locations. The original

inspiration for this project came from volunteer experiences I had on my own at the

Mid-Ohio food bank, and I wanted to bring those experiences to others in the Emerald

Campus Community. I have found that volunteering leaves me feeling fulfilled and

allows me to be more thoughtful and aware of the problems facing our community. I feel

this is especially important for the students of Dublin, as many of us have grown up in

fortunate situations, inside the “Dublin Bubble”, where it is often easy to be blind to

problems even in our community. The first thing I did for the project was recruit a junior,

hoping that the project could continue and possibly expand in the years after I graduate,

and also connect the project to more members of the EC community. This has also

helped to get another perspective for generating ideas. After this, I planned and set up

our first volunteer event on December 16th at the Mid-Ohio Foodbank location on Gantz

Road. One challenge I have faced so far with this event is getting enough people to sign

up, partially because I had to estimate the number of volunteers without much idea of

how many we could truly get. One solution I came to was trying to spread the word to

others through our IB Core class, by getting an update sent out and trying to connect in

person with other students. After the first event, I will have a better idea about the

number of volunteers for the future, which will make planning and organizing much

easier. I also hope that success in this first event will allow for greater awareness of not

only this project in the Emerald Campus community, but of the problems of food

insecurity in general. One thing that might need more consideration for the next event is

deciding when the best time is for the majority of people because as high school
students, many of us have busy schedules. I am very excited about this first event

because it will be my first time having an impact larger than just myself in this

community; I have volunteered on my own before, but I am hoping that bringing

together a group of people will allow us to have a much greater impact. This will also be

my first time volunteering at this particular location, so I am excited to compare it with

my previous experiences working with the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Overall, the launch of

this CAS project has been very successful, and I am looking forward to expanding my

experiences with fighting food insecurity by seeing how far the project can go.