Washington & Lee University

(LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA)

Purpose of the Project

Washington & Lee University is located in Rockbridge County, Virginia. The Rockbridge area is made up of two independent cities: Lexington and Buena Vista, both of which are characterized by income inequities which are made more complex by racial and ethnic dimensions. The Washington & Lee team sought to address food insecurity and poverty, drawing on their long-term partnerships and work with county agencies in both research and community service. According to the Feeding America Census (2018), roughly 10% of the population in Rockbridge County suffer from food insecurity, which translates to roughly 2,300 of 22,450 residents. Additionally, a majority of residents (54%) who are food insecure fall below the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) threshold. For this area, meals average at about $3.07 per meal and the annual dollar amount needed by food-insecure residents totals to be approximately $1,196,000.

Washington and Lee’s Food Justice equals Racial Justice (FJ=RJ) team sought to use Racial Justice Community Funds to move the team from research to evaluation and sustainability, with a goal of increasing long-term access to hunger relief for BIPOC individuals, families, and communities, in the Rockbridge area. The FJ=RJ team’s multistage process included: (1) conducting research concerning the underserved demographics and their environment; (2) targeting the causes of food insecurity specific to the people of Rockbridge; (3) finding, utilizing, and creating sustained resources to ensure that underserved residents receive nourishing food that respects their tradition, culture, and autonomy.

Meet the Team Leadership

The team worked closely with Jen Handy, Executive Director of the Rockbridge Area Relief Association (RARA), a sustained partner. Jen has been the executive director of RARA in Lexington Virginia, for over five years, supporting RARA to execute its mission to alleviate hunger and address poverty in the Rockbridge area. She was in constant contact with Student Leaders from W&L and guided them with her knowledge of the issue in the area.

Four student leaders guided the team’s work. Fatou Lemon is a rising junior Bonner student from The Bronx, New York. She is majoring in Environmental Studies with a focus on environmental economics, and she wants to minor in Poverty and Human Capabilities Studies. She currently volunteers at Project Horizon, a domestic violence shelter, and she is partnered with a small non-profit organization called The Bridge Gambia. She is very passionate about the challenges that face the environment, and the relationship in which the environment impacts underrepresented individuals. Lemon helped to spearhead the grant proposal process for her RJCF team to get the ball rolling on the research project.

Ayomiposi “Posi” Oluwakuyide is a rising sophomore Bonner student from Union, NJ. Posi is majoring in Economics and minoring in Poverty and Human Capabilities Studies with a plan to serve underrepresented and disadvantaged communities. She has previously been engaged in community service programs through her church and 4H, and in the near future, she plans to work with Project Horizon, a domestic violence center. Posi worked closely alongside other RJCF team members to coordinate meetings, collect data and build connections with the community. As Posi noted, “It didn't take any convincing at all to get me to join this project,” because although she had less direct experience she was eager to make connections and help shed light on the nutritional disparities within the community.

Kamryn Godsey is a rising junior Bonner Leader from Surry County, Virginia. She is majoring in Sociology and Anthropology studies with a minor in Poverty and Human Capabilities Studies and potentially Entrepreneurship. Currently, her main service site is with W&L’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) chapter as the co-community coordinator. She has also served as a volunteer for the Rockbridge YMCA afterschool program. Kamryn has served her RJCF team by connecting with knowledgeable alumni to help her team go through the IRB process smoothly. Kamryn wanted to go “all hands in” on the project because she knows her team has personally had experience with food insecurity whether it be from interactions with relief associations in the community, or their own personal experiences.

Mesoma Okolocha is a rising junior Bonner student from Abuja, Nigeria. He is pursuing a major in Computer Science with a minor in data science. He volunteers regularly with Habitat for Humanity in Rockbridge and LifeSong Kenya, an organization serving young boys in Kenya. Mesoma also serves on the Executive Boards of his school’s African Society and Student Association for Black Unity as well as working for the Office of Inclusion and Engagement at Washington and Lee. Mesoma is dedicated to the further development of his skills in order to better serve his community at home and globally.

UNCOVERING AND TARGETING underserved COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

The team investigated the demographics of the county to develop a clearer picture for its work. Overall, Rockbridge County, according to the 2012-2016 American Community Survey, is predominantly White people with a population of 93% Whites, 3% African American/Black, 2% Mixed Race, and 2% Hispanic/Latino. The cities Lexington and Buena Vista are a bit more racially and ethnically diverse. In Lexington, over 9% of the population is African American/Black, 4% are Asian, 4% are Hispanic/Latino, 2% are Mixed Race, and 84% are White. In Buena Vista, 7% are Asian, 2% are African American/Black, and just over 1% are Hispanic/Latino and Mixed Race, respectively, with the remaining 89% being White.

The team dug into this picture. Rockbridge County has many areas that are identified as food deserts according to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). RARA conducted a research survey that showed that county residents who are people of color and qualify for food services access their resources at much lower rates than their white counterparts. The Census Bureau's opportunity atlas shows that a large concentration of people of color live on the south side of Rockbridge County, and on average they make about $23,000 less than local White residents. The team developed a focus on those particular people of color living in the south side of Rockbridge County to better understand how to bridge the gap of food access.

“It is our hope that this work will move the needle on food insecurity in these same groups, impacting not just the lived experiences of our community members but also some of the larger structural barriers to change in our local area,” the team wrote in their proposal.

ADDRESSING NUTRITIONAL DISPARITIES

A deeper look at the community’s needs surfaced a related, overlooked issue: nutritional disparity. “With a total Black population of 3.3% (or potentially 5% of the community including persons of mixed race), there was little focus on ways to effectively reach Black families and individuals experiencing food insecurity,” the team noted. By simply posing the question of racial nutrition disparity within Rockbridge, the community was deeply impacted, according to Kamryn. The team conducted interviews and gathered data in order to understand the causes of the disparity and to help RARA increase and target its access to food services to reach the Black community. Through this process, the team is also learning critical community-engaged research skills, including how to use a snowball method to identify individuals to interview.

The team is also learning to analyze the context to find root causes and solutions. For instance, they are looking at the location of RARA, which is not in close proximity to the residences of Black community members. They are investigating whether transportation plays a role in causing the nutrition disparity. They are also examining awareness about RARA’s food services to see if that hinders the number of people who are able and willing to use the pantry. Finally, they are looking at attitudes of residents, who may not feel comfortable using RARA’s services for a variety of reasons.

“By conducting interviews and analyzing the resulting qualitative data, we can conclude if our theories hold any truth and find out what other factors exist to then pose and implement solutions that close the racial disparity,” the team asserted in their year-end report.

SHARING Lessons Learned

This past year, the FJ=RJ team learned some replicable and valuable lessons they want to share with the greater Bonner Network regarding this work. One key takeaway is how to design and navigate a research project in a community-led, co-created, participatory way. In their words, this requires humility, patience, listening, sharing leadership and responsibility, creativity, respect, brainstorming, and not fearing failure.“Every member of the team is passionate about the ability of our research to potentially achieve racial justice in Rockbridge, but in various ways we had to contend with the messiness of moving from concept to actionable plan,” the team said.

The team expressed that racial justice at the intersection of food justice was difficult to conceptualize and put on paper, “so even as frustrations mounted we learned that patience and persistence was important. It was important for us to recognize that throughout the process, we were going to make mistakes and have to backtrack to the drawing board. The pressure to make everything perfect and have everything work at the first attempt was something, as students, we had to overcome.” Through this work, they are learning how to narrowing down big ideas into specific, actionable, research-driven plans.

According to the team, this consisted of consulting experts, finding similar models working in other spaces, learning the context in which you're working from many sources, and choosing to make S.M.A.R.T. goals. For instance, they narrowed their region of research by using available resources from public and county databases and by reaching out to community professionals, individuals, and organizations involved in hunger relief in Rockbridge, helping them to contextualize the complexity of the issue of food insecurity in the county.

Finally, they have learned how to negotiate shifting timelines, conflicting priorities, and changing community needs. The pandemic, in particular, made it necessary for the team to rethink and shift their approach, timelines, and research.“During that time we all learned to be more patient with ourselves and flexible with the project. We did not want to rush and finish a project that did not adhere to our personal goals or meet the community's needs.”

As students, the team also struggled with the exhaustion of advocating for themselves in their own community at Washington & Lee. During this time, Washington and Lee was also grappling with its own legacy and connection with slavery, and as students of color, they had to represent the voices affected by the culture created when Confederate generals are honored. “We were fighting for the road to racial justice to be paved at our school, a fight that took so much energy out of many people. Our priorities as Black students on this campus sometimes are not even chosen; they are forced upon us due to the nature of the situation and environment we find ourselves in. The Racial Justice Initiative is important to us because of the significance of what we proposed and the issues we can see that the Rockbridge Community is facing, but the importance of the ongoing battle on-campus meant that for a while we had to take a step back from the research to take time for ourselves and to fight for our community.”

to learn more

If you would like to learn more about how the team designed, navigated and secured support for its community-engaged research, including approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), see their proposal, process, and documentation. They have been happy to share their work here.

For more information on the Rockbridge Area Relief Association (RARA) visit their website here.