13 students from TWC’s Local Green Civic Engagement Project witnessed the power of partnerships between two local non-profit organizations.
The students visited the Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network (MAGNET) [1] warehouse to sort and bag produce that had been recently gleaned. Gleaning is the popular practice of collecting produce that has not been harvested from fields and would otherwise go to waste. The produce is oftentimes missed by machines when fields are commercially harvested or is simply not harvested because it would not be economically profitable.
Organizations like MAGNET are committed to gleaning produce which can then be delivered to various partners such as food pantries like the Arlington Food Assistance Center [2]. When Local Green reached out to Arlington Food Assistance Center about gleaning opportunities for volunteers, they were faced with a small hurdle. Gleaning requires students to visit either a farm or the MAGNET warehouse, neither of which are metro accessible. MAGNET was able to provide a shuttle which transported students from the Branch Avenue Metro to the warehouse, located in Cheltenham, MD.
In spite of temperatures that hovered just above the freezing point, the Local Green students were able to sort and bag several pounds of produce, some of which will be delivered to Arlington Food Assistance Center. They finished their time at the warehouse with smiles on their faces and were given bags of turnips and rutabagas to take home with them. Most importantly, they learned that through the strong partnership between MAGNET and the Arlington Food Assistance Center, their efforts went to help those in need.
