About the Role
(This position is currently filled but we will gladly consider your application for the next term or for another position. The earliest possible start date for the next member in this role is 6/18/2024).
As a Food Rescue Coordination VISTA with North Iowa Mutual Aid, you will reduce hunger and food waste through the expansion of food rescue with support from NIMA leaders. You will recruit new food donors, identify partner organizations, and build the capacity of the organization to reduce food insecurity in North Iowa. Your service will be crucial to the formation of connections between farmers & retailers with excess food, and food security organizations.
You will seek to make food rescue a simple and desirable activity for all stakeholders, and enhance public awareness of NIMA through existing and new relationships. You will identify solutions to unmet local demand through sustained outreach to historically underrepresented populations. You will become a trusted resource on food safety for diverse stakeholders You will expand volunteer opportunities and generate greater interest in them, learning best practices in recruiting & retaining a dedicated community of volunteers.
Requirements
You should work well alongside diverse groups of people with accountability and compassion; be eager to establish and maintain positive working relationships; and have an equity centered mindset, excellent communication, and interpersonal and organizational skills.
About the Organization
North Iowa Mutual Aid operates on a mutual aid model, working cooperatively to meet each other’s needs. Mutual aid calls for analyzing the causes of systemic issues and building new social constructs for resolving those issues. Mutual aid is offered to all. Our mission is to meet the needs of all North Iowans by identifying and amplifying gaps between current services and what people can do to support each other interdependently
North Iowa Mutual Aid’s programs focus on reducing food waste; providing easy access to fresh, healthy food; harm reduction; period equity; and encouraging people to connect with our community.
As a Nourish Iowa VISTA member, you will serve among a cohort of members whose service is building a more equitable food system throughout Iowa, sponsored by the Center for Energy & Environmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa, and will have frequent opportunities to share knowledge within this community through regular cohort-wide meetings & site visits.