Given Ben's willingness as a VISTA to above and beyond his role, ability to connect with community members, research and synthesize large amounts of information with the stories and feedback of those community members, willingness to be flexible, and understanding of the need for individual leadership and accountability and collaborative work, our organization found resources to hire him and expanded his responsibilities. Ben continued to exhibit the same innate understanding of the need to humble himself in new communities, listen to the aspirations and challenges that community members shared, and be responsive in ways that met them where they were at. His expanded role had him involved across our organization's work to look at broader policy implications of place-based and culturally-grounded practices to shift our food system by capturing the ongoing thoughts and work by our numerous partners in regular monthly meetings, researching broader systemic issues that affect our partners, and taking the lead on related community process design and engagement opportunities. In addition, Ben also directly supervised and mentored our new AmeriCorps VISTA who continued his initial work. Ben exhibited the same care and attention to detail in mentoring our new VISTA and once a task was assigned to Ben, he was able to digest the assignment and properly delegate the necessary work so that the entire task was finished thoroughly and efficiently. As such the transition for the new VISTA was seamless and made my job as an administrator much more manageable. Mahalo Ben!

During our search for an AmeriCrops VISTA, Ben immediately caught our attention due to his strong academic background and more importantly his thoughtful questions, cultural sensitivities, and thorough preparation for the interview. The VISTA role itself was not an easy one yet Ben exhibited active listening, research, and community engagement skills. He carried out statistical research on the socio-economics of food and integrated it into our collectively designed community engagement processes. Ben also carried out thoughtful and concise presentations, facilitated small group discussions, and took responsibility of following up with a number of individual groups to catalyze a broader food justice campaign. He is a self-motivated individual who is able to work effectively as an individual and collaboratively with other staff as well as our consultants and was the driver in developing templates and protocols for partners that involved operational flow charts, rudimentary feasibility analyses, and organizing a food-based nutrition curriculum.

Given Ben's willingness as a VISTA to above and beyond his role, ability to connect with community members, research and synthesize large amounts of information with the stories and feedback of those community members, willingness to be flexible, and understanding of the need for individual leadership and accountability and collaborative work, our organization found resources to hire him and expanded his responsibilities. Ben continued to exhibit the same innate understanding of the need to humble himself in new communities, listen to the aspirations and challenges that community members shared, and be responsive in ways that met them where they were at. His expanded role had him involved across our organization's work to look at broader policy implications of place-based and culturally-grounded practices to shift our food system by capturing the ongoing thoughts and work by our numerous partners in regular monthly meetings, researching broader systemic issues that affect our partners, and taking the lead on related community process design and engagement opportunities. In addition, Ben also directly supervised and mentored our new AmeriCorps VISTA who continued his initial work. Ben exhibited the same care and attention to detail in mentoring our new VISTA and once a task was assigned to Ben, he was able to digest the assignment and properly delegate the necessary work so that the entire task was finished thoroughly and efficiently. As such the transition for the new VISTA was seamless and made my job as an administrator much more manageable. Mahalo Ben!

During our search for an AmeriCrops VISTA, Ben immediately caught our attention due to his strong academic background and more importantly his thoughtful questions, cultural sensitivities, and thorough preparation for the interview. The VISTA role itself was not an easy one yet Ben exhibited active listening, research, and community engagement skills. He carried out statistical research on the socio-economics of food and integrated it into our collectively designed community engagement processes. Ben also carried out thoughtful and concise presentations, facilitated small group discussions, and took responsibility of following up with a number of individual groups to catalyze a broader food justice campaign. He is a self-motivated individual who is able to work effectively as an individual and collaboratively with other staff as well as our consultants and was the driver in developing templates and protocols for partners that involved operational flow charts, rudimentary feasibility analyses, and organizing a food-based nutrition curriculum.

Given Ben's willingness as a VISTA to above and beyond his role, ability to connect with community members, research and synthesize large amounts of information with the stories and feedback of those community members, willingness to be flexible, and understanding of the need for individual leadership and accountability and collaborative work, our organization found resources to hire him and expanded his responsibilities. Ben continued to exhibit the same innate understanding of the need to humble himself in new communities, listen to the aspirations and challenges that community members shared, and be responsive in ways that met them where they were at. His expanded role had him involved across our organization's work to look at broader policy implications of place-based and culturally-grounded practices to shift our food system by capturing the ongoing thoughts and work by our numerous partners in regular monthly meetings, researching broader systemic issues that affect our partners, and taking the lead on related community process design and engagement opportunities. In addition, Ben also directly supervised and mentored our new AmeriCorps VISTA who continued his initial work. Ben exhibited the same care and attention to detail in mentoring our new VISTA and once a task was assigned to Ben, he was able to digest the assignment and properly delegate the necessary work so that the entire task was finished thoroughly and efficiently. As such the transition for the new VISTA was seamless and made my job as an administrator much more manageable. Mahalo Ben!

During our search for an AmeriCrops VISTA, Ben immediately caught our attention due to his strong academic background and more importantly his thoughtful questions, cultural sensitivities, and thorough preparation for the interview. The VISTA role itself was not an easy one yet Ben exhibited active listening, research, and community engagement skills. He carried out statistical research on the socio-economics of food and integrated it into our collectively designed community engagement processes. Ben also carried out thoughtful and concise presentations, facilitated small group discussions, and took responsibility of following up with a number of individual groups to catalyze a broader food justice campaign. He is a self-motivated individual who is able to work effectively as an individual and collaboratively with other staff as well as our consultants and was the driver in developing templates and protocols for partners that involved operational flow charts, rudimentary feasibility analyses, and organizing a food-based nutrition curriculum.