Meat New People, Bread the Love,

and Say, Cheese!

BY: MORGAN WELTER & MANDY HARRIS

Bienkowski | 21st Century Issues | May 1, 2015

Intro: As part of our project, we

asked four different people what their
personal definitions of hunger were. All
of them were pretty basic. One of our
teachers said, I would describe hunger
as the lack of food. This fundamental
understanding of hunger was all we
needed to make our project work. We
knew exactly what we were working
towards. The main concept of our project
was to make an impact. Even if it was
just locally, we wanted to make a
difference. We believe in the concept of
starting small and creating a ripple effect.
That seems to be the main focus of our
project. If we can make a small difference
and impact a circle of people, that circle
of people are able to pass it on and this
can continue until the situation
significantly improves.
*The following is the revised
problem statement for our project:
In an ideal world, no one would ever go
to bed hungry. No one would ever
wonder where their next meal was going
to come from, because everyone would
know. At first glance, it may seem like
hunger is mainly in third world
countries. What some people dont
realize is that hunger is not only a
problem in other countries, but a
problem that presents itself right under
our noses. Once we understand that
hunger is apparent all over the world,
well begin to see the answer to the
problem. We not only have to distribute
food to those who need it, but provide
insight to organizations that involve
helping those in need of food in our

community. In order to be successful at

doing this, we must come up with a
temporary solution and also one that will
make a lasting impact.
According to MPR News, ten percent of
Minnesotans are often hungry and dont
know where they are getting their next
meal. This means that about 547,000
people living in Minnesota currently lack
the amount of food they need for a
healthy lifestyle. According to the Caer
Food Shelf website, in the past four years,
the number of people in Minnesota who
are being served by a food shelf has risen
by 45% and 1 in every 3 kids qualifies for
free or reduced lunch at school.
MPR News says that hunger in Minnesota
is currently at an all-time high. If nothing
is done about this, the number is just
going to keep increasing. 30 Hour Famine
says that hunger causes a delay in the
development of your brain. This affects a
persons ability to read, understand
language, pay attention, and more.
Children who are malnourished tend to
do worse in school than those who are
well fed. 30 Hour Famine also points out
that 70% of the brain is being developed
within the first two years after a baby is
born. Permanent damage can occur
during this time if a kid is significantly
underfed. These permanent affects are
what we are aiming to avoid. If the babys
mother lacks the amount of food she
needs, then the baby will most likely
follow.
All over Minnesota, there are
organizations that are working towards

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solving the issue of hunger in the state.

Most of them root back to homeless
shelters and food shelves. The Sandwich
Project collects sandwiches made by the
public and distributes them to different
food shelves and homeless shelters
throughout the Twin Cities area. This
organization is going to play a role in our
project because they are going to be the
ones to collect the sandwiches that we
make. Other organizations that we plan
to make part of our project are The Food
Group, a food bank located in
Minneapolis and PROP (People Reaching
out to People) in Eden Prairie. Further
descriptions of these organizations are
shown throughout the rest of our paper.
How can we, as high school
students, make a lasting influence in the
area of hunger in Minnesota? Although
food shelves seem to be making an
impact, we believe theres always room
for improvement. Getting more people
involved is essential to bettering the
current situation. In order to do this,
more people must be updated on what is
out there. This includes notifying them
about the problem and about current
solutions and ways they can help. That is
where we come in. Through Westwood
Community Church, we plan to inform
about 80 students and 10 adults about
hunger in Minnesota. Along with
educating them about what is going on,
we want to inspire them to make a
difference. We believe we will get there
by fundraising with them and using this
money to buy supplies for making
sandwiches for The Sandwich Project.

Although we do not plan on making a

specific sandwich goal, we hope to make
a difference in the lives of many people
in our community. We also plan to
propose ideas to representatives from
three different organizations (The
Sandwich Project, The Food Group, and
PROP) about how they can be more
efficient and possibly collaborate. Not
only are we making a short-term impact,
but we hope to also create a long-term
impression by raising awareness on the
subject.
Further research about
organizations: Earlier, we mentioned
the names of three different
organizations that we have been working
with throughout our project.

The Sandwich Project takes

sandwiches that people make on their
own and delivers them to different
homeless shelters and food shelves
around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

The Food Group is a food bank

that distributes food to different food
shelves that need it.

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The other organization that we

mentioned is called PROP and it is
located in Eden Prairie. PROP stands for
People Reaching Out to People and as
part of our project, we had the
opportunity to tour their office and ask
any questions that we had. We
discovered that they do way more than
we originally thought. At first, we
thought they just distributed some food
locally and helped out the homeless in
our community. They do in fact do that,
but it turned out to be more than we
expected. They have many different
programs that we didnt even know
existed. Some of these include Summer
Food for Kids which gives each child in
the program a two-week supply of snacks
for kids who are receiving free or reduced
lunch during the school year and do not
have the money to purchase enough food
for the summer. Another program they
have is called the Backpack Program
which gives kids grades K-12 backpacks
full of basic school supplies to start off
their next school year. Other services
PROP offers include financial services,
like homeless prevention and youth
scholarships, food services, like a food
shelf/pantry and gardening workshops,
social services, like counseling and crisis
intervention, and much more.

Our ideas: Our original idea was

simple, make a bunch of sandwiches for
homeless people. As we did more
research, the amount of sandwiches we
wanted to make was not realistic due to
the costs of the supplies and the lack of
time to make all of them. After
consulting with our teacher, we decided
making sandwiches should only be a
small portion of this project. Instead, he
told us to make it a learning experience
and go meet with other organizations
and compare all of them. We revised our
project so that it would be more of a
consulting-based project where we could
go and talk to other organizations and
see the behind-the-scenes work done. In
order to tie all of it together, we set up a
meeting with the representatives from
the three organizations mentioned
earlier to compare what they do and talk
about ways they could work together.
When we started this class at the
beginning of the semester, we had no
idea what we wanted to do. After making
a list of world problems that we were
interested in, hunger stood out to us
most. After deciding on our topic, we
narrowed it down to Minnesota and the
Twin Cities area. There were two major
aspects of our project: the physical
volunteering and the investigating of
different organizations.
Our individual problem to
solve: When this project started, we
knew we were going to focus within our
community. We knew we were not going
to be able to completely eliminate the
problem of hunger, even within our own
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backyard. It is probably more accurate to

say we were working towards improving
the situation than completely solving the
problem. All we really hoped for
throughout this whole thing was to make
a lasting impact, no matter how small it
may have been. We really just hoped that
we could help kids get an understanding
of what is going on in their community
and help different organizations work
together and more efficiently. Everyone
was working towards a common goal.
Action plan: The first part of our
project involved making sandwiches for
The Sandwich Project through the sixth
grade groups at Westwood Community
Church in Excelsior. First, we contacted
Aaron Morland, a leader of a sixth grade
small group, and asked him if he thought
this part of the project was plausible. He
assured us that it was. Through Aaron,
we were able to contact Dianne
DeKoning, the woman in charge of the
middle school childrens ministry. Once
we were able to get in contact with her,
she helped us set up a day to come in
and talk to the groups about what we
would be doing and how they can help
by collecting contributions to buy
supplies with. We informed them that
we would come in a month later to make
the sandwiches on April 15th. Throughout
the month, the kids were able to raise
about $1,200, including parents
companies donating checks, and that
exceeded our expectations.
The smart way would have been to call a
grocery store or go in and talk to a
manager about the amount of money we

had and the amount of sandwich

supplies we could buy with that money.
Unfortunately, we didnt think the smart
way. For about a week, every day after
school we would go to a different Cub
Foods and buy them out of their
supplies.
On the night of April 15th, we went to the
church early to set up all of the tables
with what they needed. We placed a set
of reminders on each table. As the kids
started to arrive, we were able to explain
to them what we were going to be doing:
making as many sandwiches as we could
in the short half hour that we had. When
that time started, every kid was very
excited. The room was full and everyone
had a job to do. When a bag of
sandwiches was done, an adult would
bring that bag up to us. At the end of the
night, we had used up a good chunk of
the total supplies we bought. The rest we
were able to use by making sandwiches
at home on our own. We contacted
multiple places for them to be delivered
to and we knew they were in good hands.
That part of our project was over.
The second part of our project
involved getting in touch with a few
different organizations and looking at
the behind-the-scenes of each one. We
would then get a representative from
each organization to come meet with us
to discuss possible collaboration. First,
we contacted a woman named Amy from
The Sandwich Project to see if there was
any way we could go with her to deliver
some of their sandwiches to see what it is
like and where the sandwiches go. She
PAGE 4

was happy to let us tag along on a

Wednesday afternoon during spring
break. We got to ask her questions and
really get a feel for what they do at The
Sandwich Project. Next, we were able to
get in touch with a woman named Sarah
who works for The Food Group. We set
up a time with her to go tour their
warehouse and ask volunteers a few
questions. Everyone there seemed to
really enjoy what they were doing and
that was great to see. Lastly, we emailed
a woman named Jenny from PROP in
Eden Prairie to see if there was a way for
us to check out their building and ask
her questions about the organization.
We set up a time to meet with her during
a long class period. During this time, she
gave us a tour of both the offices of the
employees and of the food shelf they
have in the back. Then, we were able to
sit down and chat with her a little about
what PROP really does. After we met
with each of these ladies individually, it
was time to get them all together. We
sent out an email to each one of them
asking if a meeting was at all possible
between the five of us. They all
responded with great interest and
decided on a date very quickly. This was
a relief.
Evaluation of Implementation Meeting: We all met one day after
school at the Dunn Bros. Coffee in Eden
Prairie. There, we were able to form
connections between the organizations
and allow for everyone to get to know
what the other organizations do. When
one person would say they were having

trouble with something or they had a

concern about their organization,
another person was able to step in and
suggest a way they could help. A couple
of specific examples of collaborations
were that Amy from The Sandwich
Project said that they were running out
of space for their freezers and Sarah from
The Food Group said that they could use
a portion of their warehouse to store a
freezer. Another example is when Jenny
from PROP and Sarah were discussing a
possible partnership between PROP and
The Food Group. Jenny said, Weve
always wanted The Food Group as a
partner! and that was great to hear.
Overall, the meeting was a success.
Our challenges: In order to get
everything we could out of this project,
we had to look at what our limits would
be. Starting with the sandwich making,
we knew there would be limitations as to
how much money we could ask the kids
to bring in. When we first introduced
this project to the leader of the middle
school childrens ministry, we found out
we were not allowed to ask for specific
donations from each kid. We had to ask
for optional contributions. Because of
this, we did not set a specific money or
sandwich goal. We figured we could just
make whatever they brought in work.
Our mentor, Aaron, was fortunately able
to help us overcome our fear of low funds
and very few sandwiches. He contacted
parents whose kids are sixth graders and
whose companies would be willing to
donate some money. We ended up

PAGE 5

getting more than we expected and we

were very pleased about that.
Another limitation we faced was
scheduling. Finding time for us to come
into the church and setting up a meeting
with the representatives from each
organization was difficult. Luckily, we
were able to make it work by finding
times outside of school.
Answer to the driving question:
How can we, as high school students,
make a lasting influence in the area of
hunger in Minnesota? In order to answer
this question, we decided to research a
little bit about current solutions to huger
in Minnesota. When we found out about
the different organizations that we based
our project around, we were hooked. In
sixth grade, we had an experience with
making sandwiches for the homeless for
the 363 Days organization. Back then, we
never thought we would be able to
accomplish what we did with this
project. Many people might not think
that we would be able to do much as
high school students to affect the current
conditions in the state, but those people
would be wrong. We were not only able
to give kids another life perspective, but
we were able to hopefully implement an
improved system throughout different
organizations.

Contact Info:
Aaron Morland (Westwood Small Group
Leader / Our Mentor):
[email protected]
Amy ONeill (The Sandwich Project):
[email protected]
Jenny Buckland (PROP):
[email protected]
Sarah Lovett (The Food Group):
[email protected]

PAGE 6

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"Minneapolis Recreational Development, Inc." Minneapolis Recreational Development, Inc. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 18 May 2015.
"Minn. 'hunger Count' High despite Better Economy." Minn. 'hunger Count' High despite Better
Economy. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
"People Reaching Out to People." People Reaching Out to People. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.
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