This summer I had the opportunity to intern at Gleaners Food Bank. Gleaners is a non-profit that serves as both a food pantry, serving members of the community, and a food bank, providing food to smaller food pantries all through Central and Southeast Indiana in their 21 county area. As a food bank, Gleaners manages partners in 21 counties all the way from Boone County to Scott county. These partners are mostly normal food pantries but also consist of school pantries, mobile pantries, and even shelters. They manage hundreds of partners across the state. All while serving thousands of community members in their own pantry every week.
They recently just opened their new Resource Center which provides even more benefits to the community members. The research center offers a free clinic, a pharmacy, legal aid, and walks community members through how to apply to SNAP, which is a government program that gives people food benefits like food stamps. I had the opportunity to work in the Community Outreach team in the resource center. The Outreach Team works mainly to help community members, who Gleaners refers to as Neighbors, to apply to SNAP. However, another goal of this team is to go out in the community and get feedback from neighbors to make improvements. This was my main purpose.
In my time at Gleaners, I mostly worked to organize and analyze data. I worked on various data projects in order to improve the overall efficiency of Gleaners service across the state. My goal was to make the data clear and accessible so that the Outreach Team and Network Managers could easily analyze the data and see where improvements could be made. The first project I worked on was using a program to layer in poverty rates in each county and the locations of Gleaners partners in those counties. This helped Gleaners see where the most need was in their counties and where they may be lacking partners. Another project I worked on was layering in the bus routes in Marion County, labeling them, and adding the Gleaners partner locations. This allowed them to see how far certain partners were from bus routes and bus stops and allowed them to see how accessible these partners were. I also organized and looked at other data such as foreign populations, English proficiency, homeowner rate, food insecurity rate, rate of SNAP use, and more.
I learned a lot from this internship and got to see a side of the Indiana community that I have not seen much oof before. The side of the community that is struggling and needs help. Many of the people that come to Gleaners and their partners around the state are employed and just aren’t making enough to get by because of grocery prices, gas prices, etc. Those in need come from many different walks of life and sometimes just need a little help to get back on their feet. I am grateful I had this experience and will be able to take what I have learned with me into my next steps.
