Service Learning for Geography

Those who know me know I already have my Ph D. What you might not know is that I’m taking classes at my local community college and paying for them out of pocket. I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, not least of which is to continue growing as a person. What follows is an assignment created by my Geography teacher and my response/reflection upon it.

For my service-learning project, I chose to volunteer with Manna Market, a food recovery program at my church. Manna market distributes food 4 days each week to Anoka County residents for free. My role during volunteering was to shop the food we have available in order to create boxes of food for families to take home. During this time, I encountered a large number of people who are food insecure. I also got an idea of the sociocultural makeup of the area.

Manna Market contributes to sustainability in the local area by recovering food that would otherwise be thrown out by grocery stores and offering it to people in need at no cost. This is food that retailers will not sell because it is either ugly in some way or because it doesn’t meet some other standard they have. We never distribute expired food. We inspect all of it to ensure it is not expired. But even the food we receive that does expire is used. A pig farmer collects it for feeding his pigs.

Manna Market has been successful over the course of about 5 years now and with the food insecurity created by the pandemic, I don’t see that changing any time soon. Since the pandemic started, Manna Market has distributed an estimated 5 million pounds of recovered food. While the undertaking does require volunteer interest and does require a lot of work on the part of its management, I believe its partnership with my church should supply both of those needs. It has also recently received a grant from Anoka County to purchase a refrigerated truck and walk-in freezer. The truck will be used to expand the capacity of distribution at another site in downtown Minneapolis, near Loring Towers, where people line up to receive food for hours.

         I think the service-learning project has made clear the racial disparities between sociocultural groups in the Twin Cities. In both the Northtown and Downtown distribution centers for Manna Market, the primary groups that are experiencing food insecurity are minorities. In downtown, it is African American people who occupy the housing project nearby and in Northtown, it is people of Hispanic descent. In both locations, the primary distributers of the food are people of white European descent who live in the suburbs. This is a clear representation of the process of white flight, redlining, and racial covenants that led to the racial divides in the Twin-Cities area. Those who have been the victims of the racist policies of the past are more likely to be food insecure because of the lack of accumulated generational wealth. You might be thinking, “but what about the Hispanic population in Northtown? Isn’t that a predominantly white area?” My suspicion is that the area has a lot of low-income housing. There are numerous run-down apartment buildings and trailer parks in the area. And though they are mixed in with other kinds of housing, that has higher property value, the presence of these buildings and housing types has led to a lot of dividing of homes into duplexes and renting them out. This is evidenced by the fact that Spring Lake Park, where Northtown Manna Market is located, has just placed a moratorium on the creation of new rental properties until the issue can be studied.

Food insecurity is an important consideration and measure of a community’s overall health and relative equity. The food dessert in the Downtown distribution area, where there aren’t any grocery stores for a long way, contributes to the inconvenience of living in the Loring Towers housing project. This creates extreme difficulties for those who don’t have a vehicle to drive to a grocery store that is outside the downtown core. This is an area exclusively set aside for people to live, and yet, the nearest grocery store is outside of walking distance. It’s an area with high property values, but the food options available are few and shrinking, and designed to cater to the tastes of the guests at nearby hotels and attendees to the convention center.

While there are grocery stores near the Northtown neighborhood in which Manna Market distributes food, the people who collect food from this location are mostly in cars and the only requirement is that they be Anoka County residents. Anoka County is large and has both rural and urban areas. The Northtown distribution site is meant mostly to serve those living in the poorer areas of the suburbs who may not technically be destitute, but are certainly food insecure.

         The idea of programs like Manna Market is a good one and one that combats the culture of conspicuous consumption that pervades our society. It is described by the leaders as a ministry that attempts to recover the bounty of God’s blessing and put it to work for the community that it serves. I think we could all stand to recover a bit more of God’s bounty and save our neighbors the stress of food insecurity. This ministry does not end food insecurity or food deserts at all. It simply combats the human impact of these systemic issues in a way that costs very little in terms of resources but creates a feeling of amity between those who give and those who receive, something we could desperately use right now.

         I have to say that I was already serving at Manna Market regularly when I decided to take this class. It did not alter my views on the U.S. in regard to environmental sustainability. I knew from the start that this program was a good one to put my time into. I decided to write about it because it is such an unsung part of the community service makeup of the area and focuses on the human geography of the area far more than the physical geography of the area. Humans are my primary interest within geography. They always have been. I think humans have the power to destroy as much as to heal. If we focus on mitigating our negative impacts upon each other, we can begin to work together in new ways. And humans working together is the only way to maintain the planet as a sustainable place for us all to live.

         In conclusion, I think it’s important to assign this kind of work to young people and have them learn about the service work that is happening all around them for no profit. It is important for us all to learn about our neighbors and contribute to the health of our communities. While I was already doing this, I think it is valuable to reflect on my time spent in this activity and what I can take away from working at Manna Market. Hopefully, in sharing some of this experience, I can help others become more aware of it also.