Week Two: Community Is Key

Hello again! Week 2 of my fellowship experience has been INCREDIBLE and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store.

To begin, I’ll introduce myself further than I did last week… My name is Natalie Gilbert and I just graduated from THE Ohio State University in May with my Bachelor’s of Science degree in Public Health with a minor degree in Spanish. I have lived in and around Columbus my whole life and I am so enjoying my time spent giving back to this community.

This week has been incredibly busy but this week I’ve really learned the importance of community and networking. To start off, my supervisor Kelly and I started our week with some communication with a local Kroger that had reached out to us regarding some extra produce. I was mostly surprised that a Kroger had casually thought of our humble food pantry to donate to, but then I learned that we have many strong relationships with Kroger’s in and around Worthington. I also learned that the donation Round Up Program that collects money from customers rounding up their bills at Kroger, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to us in years past! Keep rounding up, Columbus!

 

The donated produce in the back of my car heading to the pantry!

 

Another exciting part of my week was being apart of the Worthington community’s CoHatch meeting on Friday morning. This was a meeting filled to the brim with women from non-profits around Columbus sharing ideas and lending advice to others and it was inspiring, to say the least. It was so exciting to hear women speak so passionately about their organizations, all of the successes they are seeing through their hard work, and then helping each other out instead of being in competition with each other. The most inspiring was hearing Amber from Legacy speak about her successes with her organization that leads former human trafficking victims through rehabilitation towards redemption through her for-profit company Eleventh Candle Co.

 

 

 

I absolutely loved being apart of this brainstorm session and look forward to moving forward in this community with these hard-working and successful neighbors!

 

Until next week,

Natalie