36 min
Food Pantries, Food Insecurity, and Social Stigma BG Ideas
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- Education
In this episode, Jolie interviews Natalie Orslene, a BGSU graduate student and ICS Student Research Award winner, and Dr. Shannon Orr, Professor of Political Science. They discuss factors impacting food pantry access and the social stigma associated with food insecurity.
Announcer:From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.
Musical Intro:I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.
Jolie:Hello, and welcome back to the Big Ideas podcast, brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the director of ICS. Bowling Green State University and it's campuses are situated in the Great Black Swamp in the lower Great Lakes region. This land is the homeland of the Wyandotte, Kickapoo, Miami, Pottawatomie, Ottawa, and multiple other indigenous tribal nations present and past who were forcibly removed to and from the area.Jolie: We recognize these historical and contemporary ties in our efforts towards de-colonizing history. And we thank the indigenous individuals and communities who've been living and working on this land from time immemorial. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees.
Jolie:Today I'm talking with Natalie Orslene and Dr. Shannon Orr. Natalie is a master's student in the public administration program at BGSU. She's the recipient of an ICS Student Research Award for her project, researching food pantry access, food insecurity, and social stigma. Shannon is a professor of political science, Director of the MPA program and an expert in environmental policy. You may remember her from a previous episode on water quality in the Great Lakes. Shannon serves as faculty advisor on Natalie's project. Thank you both for joining me today.
Jolie:Natalie. I'll have you start, could you tell us about your project and what motivated you to do more research on food insecurity and food pantries at BGSU?
Natalie:Sure. So it started actually over the summer and really before that, when the pandemic began. I became interested through work Dr. Orr was doing on food insecurity and food pantries. And one of the topics that I found particularly interesting was the sort of management of it all because food pantry we talk a lot about the passion and the excitement, but the management and the work that goes behind it is very labor intensive, and also really interesting from a public administration standpoint. And something that I found interesting in that was sort of managing the behind the scenes information. So the volunteers, the organization, all of that. And so my research began in trying to understand if you were going to start a food pantry, if you're going to run a food pantry, how do you best start from the beginning? And how do you best manage volunteers from the beginning?
Natalie:Because it can be easy to start and not have all of that figured out and not kind of lay the groundwork to have a great program and a great volunteer management system. And so what I wanted to do was find out from volunteers themselves and from people who run food pantries themselves, what goes into good management and what goes into being a good volunteer, because it's really important. And it really helps to ensure that the work that you're doing is beneficial to everyone, to the community and to the people who are using the food pantry. Jolie: Can you talk a bit Natalie about the specific need for food pantries and how that particularly works on college campuses like BGSU and how that might be different from what people might be thinking about food pantries in community settings?
Natalie:Sure. So we know that food insecurity is a huge issue nationwide. In 2019, about
In this episode, Jolie interviews Natalie Orslene, a BGSU graduate student and ICS Student Research Award winner, and Dr. Shannon Orr, Professor of Political Science. They discuss factors impacting food pantry access and the social stigma associated with food insecurity.
Announcer:From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.
Musical Intro:I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.
Jolie:Hello, and welcome back to the Big Ideas podcast, brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the director of ICS. Bowling Green State University and it's campuses are situated in the Great Black Swamp in the lower Great Lakes region. This land is the homeland of the Wyandotte, Kickapoo, Miami, Pottawatomie, Ottawa, and multiple other indigenous tribal nations present and past who were forcibly removed to and from the area.Jolie: We recognize these historical and contemporary ties in our efforts towards de-colonizing history. And we thank the indigenous individuals and communities who've been living and working on this land from time immemorial. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees.
Jolie:Today I'm talking with Natalie Orslene and Dr. Shannon Orr. Natalie is a master's student in the public administration program at BGSU. She's the recipient of an ICS Student Research Award for her project, researching food pantry access, food insecurity, and social stigma. Shannon is a professor of political science, Director of the MPA program and an expert in environmental policy. You may remember her from a previous episode on water quality in the Great Lakes. Shannon serves as faculty advisor on Natalie's project. Thank you both for joining me today.
Jolie:Natalie. I'll have you start, could you tell us about your project and what motivated you to do more research on food insecurity and food pantries at BGSU?
Natalie:Sure. So it started actually over the summer and really before that, when the pandemic began. I became interested through work Dr. Orr was doing on food insecurity and food pantries. And one of the topics that I found particularly interesting was the sort of management of it all because food pantry we talk a lot about the passion and the excitement, but the management and the work that goes behind it is very labor intensive, and also really interesting from a public administration standpoint. And something that I found interesting in that was sort of managing the behind the scenes information. So the volunteers, the organization, all of that. And so my research began in trying to understand if you were going to start a food pantry, if you're going to run a food pantry, how do you best start from the beginning? And how do you best manage volunteers from the beginning?
Natalie:Because it can be easy to start and not have all of that figured out and not kind of lay the groundwork to have a great program and a great volunteer management system. And so what I wanted to do was find out from volunteers themselves and from people who run food pantries themselves, what goes into good management and what goes into being a good volunteer, because it's really important. And it really helps to ensure that the work that you're doing is beneficial to everyone, to the community and to the people who are using the food pantry. Jolie: Can you talk a bit Natalie about the specific need for food pantries and how that particularly works on college campuses like BGSU and how that might be different from what people might be thinking about food pantries in community settings?
Natalie:Sure. So we know that food insecurity is a huge issue nationwide. In 2019, about
36 min