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http://foodaccessfairfax.blogspot.com

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Food Access in Fairfax

There are a lot of questions that I wonder when it comes to food access. First off who is receiving it and from who in Fairfax. To attempt to understand the answer to this question I asked two different organizations in Fairfax what they do. Fairfax Community Church andFood for Other’s were willing to sit down for a quick interview at the end of April.

Karen Kellogg from Fairfax Community Church explained to me that they have a go local program and a go global program and both of them are dedicated to serving the community and helping others.

The FCC has a program called Stop Hunger now where they make meals that feed a family of six people. They were able to raise enough money to make meals for 142,560 families as it only cost about twenty five cents to make a meal. FCC works with 14 different partners to donate food their main programs that they work with are the LAMB center, the Katheryn K. Hanley Shelter which allows families to stay for up to 20 nights.

Nikki Clifford  is the volunteer and operations manager so she works with the volunteers and runs the power pack program and purchases for the programs. One of the programs is the Emergency referral program so that is where a social worker lets them know that a family that they work with is in “an emergency situation and they are in need of food. A referral can be sent here and food can be given to the client.”

She fills in the holes with what food needs to be purchased like canned fruit, tomatoes, and chili. Niki also purchase for the power pack program that allows her to buy for elementary and middle school children so they can have food over the weekend. She purchases food that kids would like, ravoli, mac and cheese ect. She also purchases for Thanksgiving as that is the only holiday that they celebrate with their clients as it has no religious meaning to it.

Food for others is prevalent for Fairfax because it helps people that are low on money. They also have 29 community partners and they supplement for them by helping they purchase bulk items for people that need more food.

Another program is their neighborhood sites which is how Food for Others got started. At the various sites people meet up and receive food.

They are now working on power packs with 1500 packs and 24 different schools and they are all in Fairfax at the moment.

Both of these organizations are great and helpful to the community you can listen to part of my interview with Nikki here.

Editor: Katie Pappas

Multimedia: Attie Pearsall

Community Manager: Asya Rojas

Data Journalist: Jennifer Garcia

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          Ever wonder what happens to all of the pastries at Starbucks at the end of the night? Up until 2010 Starbucks would just throw all of the pastries out. As an employee of Starbucks for two years, I can safely say that is a lot of food that gets wasted. So Starbucks decided to enact a plan to set up every local Starbucks, including the one I worked at in Fairfax, with a local church to donate all of the leftover pastries too. This allows the churches to give the pastries to homeless and hungry people that come to the church looking for food.
The Starbucks I spoke with told me that every night when they close they package up all of the pastries into large green plastic tubs, and then the next morning church employees come by to pick up the numerous tubs of pastries. They are given out in the morning and throughout the day to the homeless and hungry. According to my friend Tim they just have so much food that would go to waste, they decided that had to do something about it.
Starbucks has decided to make it easier for their stores to donate all of their pastries by collaborating with a company called Food Donation Connection. By collaborating with Food Donation Connection, Starbucks is able to increase the number of stores that can donate food, and stop all of the waste. It also makes it easier for the individual Starbucks stores to arrange pick-ups with the churches.
When I talked to my friend Tim that works at a Fairfax Starbucks he said “I am not sure of the exact church that we donate to every week because sometimes it changes depending on needs”.
Upon further research I learned that the Starbucks I used to work at donates a majority to their pastries to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Editor: Attie Pearsall

Multimedia: Asya Rojas

Community Manager: Jennifer Garcia

Data Journalist: Katie Pappas

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High-income areas such as Fairfax County are no stranger to food access programs. Fairfax County needs these food access programs just as low-income counties do. One well-known program in Fairfax County is Our Daily Bread. ODB helps to feed over 350 families a year by using their own personal food closet as well as partnering up with churches and other food access programs. “[Food access] is very important. A lot of people see Fairfax County as being very wealthy. There’s not a huge understanding of how much need there is. We can’t keep up with the need, there’s so much. We have emergency food delivery. Our food waitlist to get onto our food program is about 50 families. It’s about a 2-3 month wait,” said Christina Garris, the Food Manager at ODB. Food access tends to be overlooked in Fairfax County. “Because there is a class of people that are well off, I don’t think people see the many families that are struggling to make it. And it’s not always families that you would think,” said Garris, “We have families where one of the parents have lost their jobs, it could be something like a medical issue, you have families that are living paycheck to paycheck and next thing you know they can no longer pay their rent or feed their families. It’s very easy to slip into that role of needing to reach out to a non-profit to get assistance.” Concentrating on helping low-income families become self-sufficient, ODB differs from other food access programs in Fairfax because they do not serve the homeless. “We work with low-income families in Fairfax County and they need to be in a crisis,” said Garris.

Although ODB does cater to low-income families, you do not have to have to children to receive assistance, you can be single or a single couple. “We have a financial assistance program where we can help with rent, utilities, and car repair if their working; to help them get back and forth to their jobs. We have financial literacy and that’s where we work with simple budgeting, credit, education to help our clients understand how to improve their situation. We have a new program called Project Bridge, where for a year we’ll work intensely with a family. They have to be working in order to get into the program but we’ll look at a lot of their family issues and we might hook up with another nonprofit such as Dress For Success in getting them extra training to help them move up in their job/find a new job. We really look to help this family become self-sufficient and become educated,” said Garris. When getting assistance from ODB the longest that you can receive benefits is a year. Garris said, “If you’re on our waitlist for the food program, you stay on the list for four months and receive food delivered to your home every other month, or you get a food gift-card. If you’re being mentored and you’re in our financial literacy program, you stay on our list for six months. If you’re in Project Bridge then you stay on for 9months during the 12 months you’re in that program. We have different stages.” Partnering with about 21-25 churches in Fairfax, ODB has also recently started a network for food nonprofits called, The Food Providers, where places that have food pantries such as Food For Others, get together about every six weeks and talk about how they can partner with one another because they all do things a little differently. Garris has been the Food Manager at ODB for six years. “I thought I would do something globally but I was so surprised, having lived in Fairfax County 23 years, at the need that I saw right here in my hometown,” said Garris

Editor: Asya Rojas

Multimedia: Jennifer Garcia

Community Manager: Katie Pappas

Data Journalist:Attie Pearsall

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 Heres the spill…I am technically a commuter at George Mason. I go to my classes and then right after, I leave. I have missed out on what I could imagine to be good opportunities or presentations that are given to students like me right on campus. I have gone to events such as the DC photo week where I have seen some amazing photography as well as the photographers. I personally enjoy documentary photography because it relates to journalism, our world, and society. To be able to incorporate all of those ideas and stories through one photo is why I consider online journalism and photojournalism to be fascinating. I know that going to events and seeing speakers in this field would be very important. I will be sure to find a presentation to go too and share with you all my experiences.

On that note, I decided to randomly share some of the pictures I have taken when I first started shooting. These were 5 different shots where I was messing around with different lenses, color balances, angles, and lighting.

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Cherry Blossoms in DC

Cherry Blossoms FIXED

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  Kevin Goldburg was one of our speakers in our online journalism class. What better topic than to come talk about the Seven Deadly Sins with a twist? His powerpoint titled “Seven Deadly Sins of the Journalist” does just that. Goldburg was able to incorporate “do’s and don’ts” in the journalism world by connecting them to Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Lust, Pride, and Envy.

His overall presentation was a very useful one. It was spontaneous and it truly showed the viewers of the presentation matters and cases in which journalist seem to get in trouble for or not understanding the “law” aspect of it. He mentioned fair use, and copyright (Gluttony) and how this is one of the most important things to know just because a journalist can get sued for doing what seems to be the most minimalistic thing.

The most interesting part for me personally was how he mentioned earlier court cases which involved journalists just trying to get there hands on “the perfect story.” By adding on these facts throughout his presentation this made me realize how important the information that was being given was. As a future journalist you would not want to repeat a wrong when with facts you can get it right.

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Researching only goes so far without the correct knowledge of tools available. Joy Suh a librarian at George Mason University was one of our spokespersons, and personally one of the most important ones. Suh gave a presentation to the class on how to not only research but also do it well. She helped up understand the need to use the right online resources and where to find articles with scholarly work. There were ways on how to use sites that as a gmu student, they are free and allow us to access articles not available to the general public. She showed us government cases, how to customize maps, and use the Mason catalog. These are useful tips especially considering that as college students there are research papers that need to be done and as a student who wouldn’t want anything less than an A? Even if one is done with school, Joy Suh showed how to find research and taught us some useful keyword tips to use for searches. These tips can help anyone in their lifetime and this is why this presentation was important. Knowledge is key to life and knowing how to get sources better and faster can never do anyone wrong.

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What is a Journalist without photography? Sure writing is an amazing an important aspect of it all, but pictures say a thousand words! Personally I have worked with photography for about 5 years now and I own several DSLR cameras as well as film. This presentation, even though not much was new to me really gave me more of a touch-up of the basics. Understanding how to work your camera other than just point-and-shoot really brings out more possibilities than you could ever imagine. The tips on how to change the focus, white balance as well as sites on where to edit the pictures was very useful. Using Flickr or Photoshop are two good ways to edit as well as publish your own photography work to the public.

As a journalist, when photography can be incorporated into your own writing it makes that story even better than words alone. Photography is a useful tool and being able to use it to the ultimate advantage can really help bring a story to life.

I believe that a photo makes that story even more emotional especially if it is on a worldwide known topic. Just by being able to see emotions in a picture or even the very owncan really give that reader a connection. This presentation really was one of my facorites only because I believe that everyone should not only know how to take a picture but to be able to take pictures that tell there very own story.

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This was not the first time I went to go see this amazing journalist speak. I saw him speak last semester when he again went to gmu and I was taking Comm 303: Writing Across the Media. Kevin Sites is a freelance journalist and I am a fan of his work. His main topic in journalism is covering global wars and disasters for different news segments. He first started off with a blog where he wrote about occurring stories and then later put live footage that he filmed. To me, seeing people such as Sites talk about his career now, where journalism has taken him, and the people he has impacted throughout it all makes me want to try even harder to find my focus in journalism and continue on that path. I admire the way he covers stories because he used pictures and video to mostly do the talking for him, I studied photography and video and those are two of my favorite hobbies to focus my time on; because of this I enjoy his work.

Here is part of his documentary “A World of Conflict”

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