Log lunch on January 13th continued the series of presentations of student internships this past summer funded by the Williams Center for Environmental Studies. Anthony Raduazo ’12 and Sarah Rosenberg ’14 were both involved with organizations that dealt with environmental issues in their respective regions.
Anthony spent the summer working with Berkshire Grown (BG), a Berkshire County-based organization that supports and promotes locally-based agriculture which would in turn promote community, economy, and landscape. Through Berkshire Grown, Anthony conducted logistical work, such as tabling, fundraising, and attending agricultural meetings, as well as conducting interviews to assess how people were using the resources provided by Berkshire Grown. Anthony found that there was not a consistent use of BG resources or networking events, most often because of the catering towards the high-end, rather than the everyday person and local economy. Additionally, Anthony did reporting and outreach for Berkshire Grown by collaborating with Annette Grant of the New York Times, writing articles for the BG website, meeting members of the organization, and writing an op-ed piece for the Berkshire Commerce. For those more interested in local food, Anthony suggests getting in touch with him, reading or watching media dealing with local food, e.g. Food Inc or the Omnivore’s Dilemma, and/or interning at Berkshire Grown this summer.
Sarah worked with the Healthy Schools Campaign, a Chicago-based organization whose mission is to advocate for policies and practices that all students, teachers, and faculty to learn and work in a healthy school environment. As a policy intern, Sarah conducted research, maintained the organization’s blog, and drafted writing materials for distribution to schools. Sarah was initially involved with green cleaning, but her scope expanded to include the acquisition of additional school nurse funding. Sarah attended the Green Clean Schools Summit, a conference in Washington D.C. that served to broaden the definition of cleaning to include construction of buildings, siting, and quality. As for school nurse funding, that project started off as a side project that grew in interest as Sarah conducted more research. Because school nurses are funded by education departments, they are not particularly focused on health. Sarah sought out other sources of funding, such as insurance, Medicaid, special education, and health departments, and built partnerships with community organizations, the mayor, and nursing associations to acquire more funding. At the end of her talk, Sarah emphasized the need for context on all projects and for people to recognize their positions as stakeholders in effecting policy change.
Written by Brandon Abasolo ’13
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