Colloquium Project

Aaliyah Miller

For my project I’ve decided to volunteer at the Community Cooperative in Fort Myers, Fl. Community Cooperative is a non profit organization that tries to end homelessness and hunger in SWFL. They demonstrate this by community markets, food drives, mobile pantries, and even meals on wheels. I chose this non profit organization because it can correlate to my sense of place. I also notice them on the news giving back to the community with mobile food pantries, and resources services. Community cooperative can relate to couponing because not only was I able to get groceries and clothes almost free. I was also able to donate those items I wasn’t in need of to Community Cooperative to give back to those who are at risk of being homeless.

Sustainability

Community Cooperative demonstrations sustainability in SWFL in several ways. For one they have what’s called community market; which provides customers the option of choosing their own food instead of receiving a random box of food they may not like and throw away. Another way they demonstrate sustainability is by their Able garden.

This garden was created to lower health risk and pollution. The trees and plants are the lungs of the ecosystem, taking out toxins while filtering and putting oxygen back into the atmosphere creating sustainable living conditions. They noticed their was a problem with the health of low income families, eating cheap fast food instead of eating a nutritional meal.
This garden correlates to our latest field trip to Pine Manor they grow their own food and similarly to community cooperative they give it right back to the surrounding neighbors or people in need.

https://youtu.be/j335BTu_vFU

Poverty 😔

While volunteering at Community Cooperative I noticed they have what’s called meals on wheels. This helps assist families who are unable to drive, have chronic illnesses, and seniors to have meals delivered to their home. Community Cooperative in Fort Myers also has soup kitchen for individuals to come and get a hot meal. For those that do have vehicles they offer mobile food pantries almost every day in different parts of SWFL to accommodate people in closer areas.

At the same time I’ve learned that Community Cooperative offers social and education resource centers. With this gives people assistance with applying for Medicaid and SNAP. They provide clothing, hygiene products and even mail services for the homeless. The center also provides child care, life coaching, housing and job training.

https://youtu.be/LL3Q-KI3sSQ

What can we do?

They are a hand full of ways we can help as a whole to create a sustainable environment and ending poverty. Some of the ways is by money donations, food drives, and even volunteering. Different volunteer positions include kitchen, front desk, meals on wheels, able gardens, community market and mobile food pantries.

As a community we can cut out less meat that we eat everyday. Similar to a Ted talk video we watched in class a guy planted a garden in the middle of the city where no one considered valuable. We can try a similar approach where we can start our own garden somewhere undeveloped or unoccupied to grow our own produce.We can use eco friendly products that do not have a negative impact on the earth. We can create a compost for the garden by saving our leftovers. A popular one is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by carpooling or taking public transportation.

https://youtu.be/RyvBhC7MT84
OH HEY, FOR BEST VIEWING, YOU'LL NEED TO TURN YOUR PHONE