Hi Everyone! With the Summer Fellowship ending today, I want to reflect on my accomplishments and lessons learned throughout my time at CRIS. I am extremely proud of my work this summer and everything I accomplished, but none of my efforts would have been possible without my amazing team. They always supported me, gave me constructive feedback, and gave me the space I needed to truly thrive, and I am incredibly lucky.

This summer, I gathered over $5,500 in grocery gift card donations from community members throughout Columbus. These gift card donations went directly to clients who faced food insecurity and needed extra support. I also delivered over 90 food pantry boxes to clients, so I helped provide hundreds of meals to our recently arrived refugee and immigrant populations. Along with that, I helped create a food security system through partnerships. You all have seen me write about a few of the partnerships, but I established one with Lutheran Social Services (LSS) for five dedicated food pantry boxes per week, I built a partnership with Ohio State University for a dry-food pallet delivery that stores around 9,700 servings of food, we are working on a $50,000 grant through the City of Columbus with the NNE Map Food Pantry, and we are working with the City to become a host-site in its Go, Lunch! Program. CRIS went from little to no food security system to a small, work-in-progress system that I could not be more proud of.

While at CRIS, I learned about volunteer outreach, fundraising individual donations, partnership outreach and relationship management, communication and collaboration in a larger team, and how nonprofits operate. Through our bi-weekly learning sessions at the Columbus Foundation, I discovered more about myself, how to be an effective leader, and how to leverage my power as an individual to bring about the change I want to see in the world. At these sessions, we also met local nonprofit leaders in the Columbus community to hear more about their journeys and get a glimpse into leadership in the nonprofit world. Without these experiences, this fellowship would have felt like a regular internship, and I speak for all the summer fellows when I say how glad I am to have the chance to participate in these learning sessions.

As I sign off for the final time, I want to thank Dr. Mark Lomax, Becca Sigal, and the entire Columbus Foundation for making this experience possible for us fellows. I also want to thank the whole team at CRIS for being an exceptional hostsite who allowed me to grow and be my best self throughout my ten weeks. I had a fantastic experience and could not be happier with my summer experience.