STEMming The Tide at SCFB – Part 1
STEMming The Tide at SCFB – Part 1
The year of 2020 has brought unique challenges to Superstition Community Food Bank (SCFB), as it has to many other places locally and globally. Our challenge was to develop no contact food delivery which required our Client Services Volunteers to work outside collecting information by going car to car. There are many challenges to this even outside of the obvious weather situations, from scorching heat to rain.
In mid October a former volunteer high school student named Khushi Parikh contacted our Executive Director, Myra Garcia, to ask if her STEM team from Gilbert Classical Academy could use SCFB as a site for possible assistance or improvement of food delivery. The STEM team would them submit a proposal to ASU to fund the project and, if approved, they would build whatever it was we had decided upon. Who could say no to that! Myra appointed Nicki Krafft, a food bank volunteer, to coordinate the project with the STEM team consisting of: the team lead, Ayla Young; Khushi Parikh, Keely Sorenson and Madison Ngo along with another food bank volunteer John Young, whose carpentry and engineering knowledge was put to good use.
It was decided that what was needed most was some type of unit that could be wheeled from car to car which would have shelter from the sun and rain, space for IPADs to eliminate the need of a person inside inputting information via walkie talkie, space for items needed like client resource sheets and the like. Over the next several weeks we met and “zoomed” to work out the details of what SCFB needed to build a mobile unit that would be viable in the heat and terrain in the back of our building. The STEM team developed a budget and project proposal video for ASU with a clip of Nicki Krafft outlining the benefit to SCFB. To meet the team, and view this 6 minute proposal, go to: https://youtu.be/2_hrAYgk02w.
On December 19th of 2020 we found out that partial funding had been awarded with an invitation to resubmit for the rest in the spring cycle. With a little tweaking on the specifications this would allow us to build 3 mobile units. We are very excited to embark on this journey and encourage you to follow along with us as our STEM team builds and tests our new units.
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