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Project Success Internship Program: RoadRunner Food Bank

Added Apr 21, 2020 •

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SIPI student Matthew Gomez details his experience interning for RoadRunner Food Bank.

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My name is Joseph Greenwood and I work at RoadRunner Food Bank here in Albuquerque. RoadRunner has existed since 1979. It is the largest food bank in the State of New Mexico and as a food bank; it collects donations, it buys government commodities, sources food in a myriad of ways and organizes them and distributes them to partner agencies across the state, whether that's food pantries, community centers, schools those types of organizations. Per week, we're feeding about 70,000 people. That's like feeding a city the size of Santa Fe every week. We're one of the largest anti- hunger organizations in the state. Hi, my name is Matthew Gomez.  I work here at RoadRunner Food Bank and my job position is the SNAP Outreach Volunteer. And what I do is assist clients that are associated with Roadrunner Food Bank. I give them information that they need in order to apply for the food stamp program which we call SNAP, or I help them here on the computer and help them apply online directly so they can get all the benefits that they need.        [Greenwood] In general, we rely heavily upon volunteers and interns, and our SNAP outreach program, we could not do the work that we do without them. And when we have thousands of eligible people across the state who can sign up for SNAP yet aren't, and we're trying to reach them, we need all the help we can get. And this one [internship] with SIPI is probably the best one we have because they're able to dedicate a large amount of time during the week to these projects, and Matthew helped hundreds of people apply for SNAP in just the two month period that he was there. I'm trying to major in the Liberal Arts right now. So I'm constantly looking for opportunities to become a well-rounded individual, so that way I can apply everything -- my experiences -- and adapt them to wherever I'm at. So I chose this internship program and it turned out to be a little bit more overwhelming than I expected at the beginning, but as of now, I'm right on point with everything. I understand everything and it's really, it's really brightened my own future. It's helped me out a lot. It [internship] did meet my expectations, in fact it over met my expectations if that makes sense. Because I wasn't expecting this type of reaction from people just for helping them. [Greenwood] Not only was he able to carry out the work of helping people to apply for SNAP and greatly expanding the capacity of our program, but he became an advocate for it in his personal life. He shared stories of how he talked to his family members, his friends. He gave a wonderful presentation here at SIPI to students and faculty about how important SNAP is. He become a real advocate for it and he really developed this personal belief in how important the work is. And I saw him change a lot as a person and so that was really inspiring for me personally. That made me more excited to do the work. [Gomez] The people here at Roadrunner have shown me nothing but love and support, and it's really helped me establish myself as a professional person. We feel like we have a responsibility and obligation to communicate and build relationships with tribal communities in the state, and we feel very strongly in our relationship with SIPI can help us [with] that. Because the students here they can act as ambassadors, they can act as communicators. They can help build bridges and that allows us to have a larger relationship with communities outside of the school, not just the student body and the staff and faculty here. [Gomez] I believe if any other students are interested in any kind of internships such as this they should take it, because I believe that you need to be well-rounded and know how to operate in a business setting if you want to be successful at this time in this generation.

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Project Success Internship Program: RoadRunner Food Bank

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