If you know only the basics about Food Recovery Network, you probably know that we’re the largest student movement against food waste and hunger in America – that we empower student leaders on campuses in almost all 50 states to fight waste and feed people every day. We’ve always been conscious of the implications of the rapid growth of our movement and committed to building a strong, connected and powerful Network, not just for now but for the long term.
About a year ago, Cam, Ben, Mia and I sat down in our conference room, pulled out some snacks and some chart paper, and began to answer the questions, “How do we continue to support a growing movement? How do we provide leadership opportunities to students at the National level? How do we ensure that our policies, programming and protocol are aligned with what our FRNds want, need and can comply with?” About an hour later, we had the outline of what would become the Food Recovery Network Regional Outreach Coordinators program (FRN ROCs).
Thanks to the Sodexo Foundation, we launched FRN ROCs during the Fall 2015 semester. This year, we’re piloting the program with four awesome leaders in the Northeast (you can meet them here) who are kicking off the whole thing by planning our first-ever post-Dialogue action event: Feeding Our FRNds.
Food Recovery Network began as a student club at the University of Maryland, College Park; by welcoming our first ROCs cohort, we are re-committing to our core value that “anyone can be a leader” and emphasizing even more the importance, impressiveness and sheer power young people working together have as change agents on campus, in their communities and in our global society.
Even though we’re starting small in 2016, we’re already thinking big. We intend to grow the ROCs program region by region over time. The call for applications for the 2017 FRN ROCs cohort will open in November 2016; you can sign up for alerts by emailing membersupport@foodrecoverynetwork.org.
Stay tuned to our blog for updates from our ROCs in the field!
Special thanks to Sara Ribakove, distinguished former FRNd, for the wonderfully clever program name and to Hannah Gingerich, current Member Support Fellow, for the invaluable programming assistance!
