The Congressional Hunger Center Alumni Council supports the Hunger Center's mission to develop, inspire, and connect leaders in the movement to end hunger, and to advocate for public policies that create a food-secure world. The Council does this by fostering a community of engaged alums who support the professional development of current fellows and other alums, and who remain active leaders in the movement for a food-secure world.
The Congressional Hunger Center recently announced that they welcomed new members to their Alumni Council, one of them being an Allegheny Bonner Alum, London Dejarnette.
London Dejarnette is a recent graduate from Allegheny College where they studied Environmental Science and Sustainability & Community and Justice Studies. London served in the Hunger Center's 5th class of Zero Hunger Interns in 2022 and considers their career path to be a direct result of their experience in the program.
After learning about Food Recovery Network while in ZHI, they started a chapter at Allegheny that recovered over 3,000 lbs of food to redistribute during their time as President. London also worked with Food Recovery Network to start a campus Food Resource Center to address student food insecurity. They went on to study the Food Resource Center and student-run approaches to addressing colligate food insecurity in their senior comprehensive project. This written work has been featured in Queer Earth Food Ed.3 by Combos Press and at the Northeast Student Farmer Conference at Penn State University.
London received the Campus Sustainability Champion Award from the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium and the Alyson Lawendowski Outstanding Community Service Award in recognition of their work with FRN. While at Allegheny, London also served as the Director of Student Affairs in The Allegheny Student Government, the Chair of the Dining Committee, a Bonner Scholar, and a Community Programming Intern at Project EATS in New York City. Shortly after graduating, they became the Food Programs Coordinator at Oberlin Community Services in Oberlin, Ohio. At OCS, London oversees food pantry programming for over 400 families a week.
They started the Farm to Fork Youth Cooking program with the Youth Climate Action Fund to improve communal nutrition education outcomes. Every day, London uses what they learned in ZHI to partner with local governments, community organizations, and academic institutions to address hunger in Lorain County.
London also participated as an alumni panelist at the 2024 Bonner Summer Leadership Institute at Oberlin College this past June.