I’m really enjoying where my placement at Authority Health is going. I’m currently researching emergency food efforts of multiple organizations such as the Detroit Food Policy Council, the Food Bank Council of Michigan, and the Henry Ford Health System. I’m also interviewing past Schweitzer Fellows on the sustainability of their humanitarian/public health projects. And there were a lot of unexpected opportunities, such as participating on the publication on a paper about school health education and potentially writing a letter to legislators about food insecurity. But of course, I’m enjoying the connections between made outside of my placement, specifically with the other DCERP fellows.
The specific experience I want to touch on is being able to follow majority of the DCERP fellows on Snapchat. I know this sounds kinda silly on paper, but it’s a big step with the bonding between us fellows. GroupMe is a great app in order to have group chats in, but it’s not really known to be extremely social. It’s more, in my opinion at least, for business/ collaborations. But in Snapchat we are able to make a group chat that’s a lot more relaxed and homely. And it’s also great to see people’s stories on what they’re doing outside of the whole program, such as hanging out with friends (safely) and reading. Hopefully in the end we can start hanging out in person (or virtually), whatever that may look like. I’m going to require it, lol.
Hi Leslie!
YES! I relate so much to this post. It has been so fun for me to see other fellow’s stories on snapchat this week. Usually it would not be that exciting, and I agree with you this sounds weird as I type it out, but it was such a good feeling that we made a group chat outside of group me. I also hope we can get to know each other better!