As the summer comes to a close, so does my internship with the Alaska Food Policy Council. I am Will Kessler, a political science student from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. I had the pleasure of working as a remote summer intern with the Council and got to work on a number of important projects. This ranged from researching, to writing, to reviewing, and through it all, I was able to develop my skills and gain valuable experience in this field better than I could not have done otherwise.
I started out the summer by compiling a list and summary of regional Alaska food assessments that would be used to reference for action planning. Looking back, this was the best first project to be given, as it familiarized me with many different individual communities in Alaska as well as gave me the opportunity to get a sense of how Alaskans think about food security. This project helped me grasp many concepts that were foreign to me, such as the importance and emphasis that Alaskans put on working with and respecting all cultures, which often meant addressing food security issues in different ways, such as considering certain hunting and subsistence practices.
As this was the first time I had been exposed to the idea of food assessments, I became very interested in how they could promote food security in a community-orientated way. I wrote a report to be shared later about why every community should have a food assessment and accompanied that with an infographic which helped me familiarize myself with Canva. Other projects involving the AFPC blog include an introduction of myself and a recap of the bills passed in June by the Alaska Legislature and signed into law by the Governor. Reading over the bills to create the recap was a really helpful exercise in close reading and critical thinking, as I sought to address the practical implications of the bill and see through the official jargon that it was presented in to create something that could be hopefully understood by all people and not just those familiar with legal writing.
I also researched options on how to improve regulations and streamline programs in a way that can responsibly help bring all of Alaska closer to food security without compromising the standards that are required for a stable and safe food system. Working on this project tied together all the previous skills of close reading, understanding food policy, and critical thinking to ultimately find ways the state could improve Alaska’s food systems.
To wrap up the summer, I worked on updating the AFPC communications guide. Looking at Johns Hopkins’ guide for developing a communications strategy for food councils, I was able to gather several key takeaways from this article, such as implementing sections on different mediums of communication like in-person and flyers. Through this, the AFPC will hopefully be better able to deliver a cohesive message and focus on its goals so that the advocacy for food security in Alaska can be better disseminated to the public.
Lastly, I would like to say thank you to Robbi, Lorinda, and the whole AFPC for agreeing to take me in as an intern this summer. It was a great experience and I appreciate the opportunity to work on just a few of the many important projects that the AFPC is doing to help work towards food security in Alaska.
