Americorps workers are helping Food and Fitness Initiative

Flannery Cerbin

Two workers from the AmeriCorps program are helping the Northeast Iowa Food & Fitness Initiative to reach its goals. Flannery Cerbin and Rachel Wobeter have been working for the initiative since September of 2009, focusing much time on the Farm-to-School program, which is dedicated to establishing local food systems that encourage nutrition education and local foods on school menus.

Cerbin describes their role as a link between teachers, administrators, producers, food service directors and the Food & Fitness Initiative. "I hope to leave this internship with a better sense of how to build relationships, coordinate meetings, as well as how to more effectively teach children about nutrition, gardening and food culture," Cerbin said.

Cerbin is also a 2009 Luther grad with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in English/Writing. She served as Luther's garden manager for two summers, which helped her initially connect with Food & Fitness.

While Cerbin was still a student at Luther, she gave a presentation to several representatives of FFI. The focus of the project was about college gardens as a means of outdoor education and local food consumption. The representatives offered Cerbin an all-expense paid trip to San Jose, CA for the National Food and Society Conference. She maintained contact with FFI and in the late summer was offered an AmeriCorps position.

Wobeter graduated from Luther College last May with a degree in Anthropology and a minor in Environmental Studies. She chose to work for the Food & Fitness Initiative because of the diverse array of projects and opportunities for learning. She also expressed how impressed she was with the support for local foods in the Decorah and surrounding communities.

"We are helping the Food & Fitness Initiative as leaders and participants move from their planning period to their implementation period," Wobeter said. "There are many projects and activities going on and we are helping plan, coordinate and evaluate them."

"The unique thing about the Food & Fitness Initiative is that it is dedicated to listening to the community, and this requires an immense amount of coordinating," Wobeter said. "It's much easier to have one manager or director call the shots; it's a whole other ball game when you involve teachers, farmers, bankers and everyone in between to make a decision."