CANDIDATE BACKGROUND
Academic Institution: Oberlin College
Candidate: Adriane Bellomo Dellorco
Mailing Address: OCMR 736, Oberlin, OH 44074
Phone (day and eve.): (440) 774-4073
Email: Adriane.Dellorco@oberlin.edu
Degree at Graduation 2003, and Area of Specialization:
Environmental Studies Major, with Spanish Minor

CANDIDATE ESSAY RESPONSES
1. Please describe previous leadership and community service experiences:

I have participated in community service since I was fourteen years old. Beginning with bagging groceries at a food pantry once a week in ninth grade, I continued to be involved in community service organizations throughout high school. I took on leadership positions such as Vice President of the Amnesty International group on campus for two years and President of the Earth Club (a group that participated in environmental initiatives such as water quality monitoring and tree planting) for one year. I served as a full-time volunteer for the Student Conservation Association (SCA) during the summer between tenth and eleventh grade. With the SCA, I tented for five weeks with a group of students in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington and performed intense physical labor doing forest restoration work. It was after this profound experience that I knew that I wanted to devote my energies to solving environmental issues.

During my time at Oberlin College, I have continued to pursue the environmental interests and leadership skills that I had developed in high school. I began my first semester at Oberlin College doing weekly volunteer work at the Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project, a local nonprofit organic farm. During my second semester as a freshman, I became extremely motivated to work towards connecting local farmers with the College Dining Service (CDS). What began as part of an Environmental Studies 101 group research project to analyze the potential for local farmers to sell their product to CDS, has since turned into a four-year project that I have pursued and seen come to fruition. As part of this campaign to get local foods in CDS, I started an ad hoc committee of students called Students for Local Organic Produce (SLOP) and worked intimately with the college administration and the OSAP farm on this issue. I managed to land a job with CDS my sophomore year and was actually paid to pursue my local foods goals under the title of “CDS Recycler”. As a CDS Recycler for the past three years, I have been able to take part in numerous other environmental initiatives, such as recycling, donating leftovers to local soup kitchens, and marketing Oberlin’s reusable mug program. On a somewhat unrelated note, I also worked with Habitat for Humanity during the Spring Break of my sophomore year to help build homes in Mississippi.
During my sophomore year I was also selected to be one of twenty Shouse Non-Profit Leadership Scholars from Oberlin College, a two-year skills-intensive program that prepares students for leadership positions in the nonprofit sector. This program proved to be an invaluable resource that provided me with funding to go to organic farming conferences, grant-writing workshops, and to buy books related to my area of interest.

The fall semester of my junior year was a time of intense local foods efforts. I became a board member of the OSAP farm after helping to negotiate an agreement with the college to buy OSAP produce. This was the first semester that CDS served local organic food in its dining halls. I served as the liaison between OSAP and CDS, taking orders, compliments, and complaints from the CDS managers and communicating them to the OSAP grower and board. I also took part in the grand task of organizing a regional conference at Oberlin funded by the Community Food Security Coalition. This conference entitled, “Farms to Colleges: Building a Sustainable Regional Food System in Northeast Ohio,” brought students, farmers, and dining service administrators from various colleges and counties in the area together to learn about how to connect local farms to colleges. I helped develop a list of the invitees, registered the participants, organized the local foods meals for the event, and spoke in a panel on my experience with working to build a local foods program at Oberlin.
After taking the second semester of my junior year off to live in a largely self-sufficient farming community in Virginia called Twin Oaks, I was pleased to return to Oberlin my senior year to see how much CDS had incorporated local foods into its menus. I have continued my work as a CDS recycler to organize an All-Ohio meal in Oberlin’s largest dining hall and am currently in the early stages of calculating how much local food was purchased last fall. I am also embarking on an independent project during the spring semester to create a website intended to educate students at other schools who want to incorporate local foods into their dining halls.

2. What personal and professional values, principles and experiences have drawn you to create the Compton Mentor Fellowship plan you envision?

My proposal for the Compton Mentor Fellowship is an extension of the values and experiences I have accumulated during high school and college. A light turned on in my angst-ridden teenage head in ninth grade when I began to realize the effect of our consumerist lifestyles on the environment and social fabric. I began to think more about my impact in the world and my capacity to change it for the better. I developed a value for environmental and social self-sufficiency that has continued to direct my thoughts and actions today. I derive much personal pride and enjoyment from striving for self-suffiency for my daily needs and believe that small communities can also benefit from the greater sense of security that self-sufficiency provides.

Nevertheless, I am also one that prefers to work with “the system,” rather than against “the system.” I prefer not to take an antagonistic approach to socially irresponsible corporations or institutions, but instead work with them to change their harmful practices. I believe that helping institutions become socially responsible not only benefits society and the environment, but the institutions, as well.
My experience at Oberlin College working to get local foods in CDS has definitely been my primary inspiration for my fellowship proposal. I have helped to initiate the purchasing of local foods in CDS during my time at Oberlin, but feel that there is still much more to do. I fear that there will be no one else who will be able to firmly establish the local foods program in CDS after I graduate from Oberlin. It would be a waste if I were to simply graduate and never have the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with others.

The “Farms to Colleges: Building a Sustainable Regional Food System in Northeast Ohio” conference that I helped organize in the fall of 2001 also gave me much of my inspiration to include other colleges in Northeast Ohio into my proposal. This conference was a one-time event that generated a tremendous amount of excitement and enthusiasm among the participants for connecting local farms to colleges. The momentum has slowed, however, and there has been little effort since then to enact change on a regional level. I would like to fulfill the potential that was initiated at that conference to create a sustainable regional food system in Northeast Ohio through the coordination of the many students, dining service administrators, and farmers that I met at the conference.

3. If you have served as—or have worked with—a mentor, please describe the experience and its value to you.

One of the people that have had the most profound impact on my life path is my high school English teacher, Mr. Vail. Mr. Vail not only taught English, but also coordinated the “Ag. Area,” a green oasis in the corner of my asphalt-covered urban Los Angeles public high school. Mr. Vail served as my primary introduction and inspiration into organic agriculture. He encouraged me in my environmental and organic agriculture pursuits and helped me through various personal and family problems during high school. Mr. Vail continues to act as my friend and mentor to this day. I still enjoy visiting him in the “Ag. Area” when I go home and witnessing how the “Ag. Area” continues to grow and improve under his guidance.

The “Ag. Area” was a sanctuary for me and my friends; a place where we could eat lunch next to a pond and sample the myriad of fruits and vegetables that Mr. Vail taught his students how to grow. A year before I even had Mr. Vail as a teacher, I became inspired by his passion for organic agriculture and his determination to be innovative and challenge the methods in which students were typically taught. I quickly became a willing helper in the gardening chores of the “Ag. Area” during my lunches.

After doing reading and planning on my own about organic gardening, I decided to ask Mr. Vail if I could have my own plot in the “Ag. Area,” even though I was not actually one of his students yet. He agreed, but unfortunately gave me the most weed-ridden and lifeless plot because the nicer plots were already reserved for his classes. So I set out to make this forgotten piece of earth a fertile vegetable garden. I recruited my friends to work the soil during our lunches, and hopped the fence into my garden on the weekends to continue working on it. Mr. Vail gave me advice after school on gardening techniques, and I eventually succeeded in creating the lush vegetable garden that I had set out to create from a patch of weeds, pebbles, and lifeless soil. Thus, my love of organic agriculture ironically has its roots amidst the hustle and bustle of urban Los Angeles.

Every time I return to North Hollywood High to visit Mr. Vail in the “Ag. Area,” I am always flattered when he asks me to give a talk to his classes about who I am and the work I do. Mr. Vail never fails to embarrass me by introducing me as one of the best students he ever had. The mentoring relationship that I have with Mr. Vail is founded upon a sense of mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s passions and qualities. In a place like Los Angeles, where one is hard-pressed to find anyone who is passionate about organic agriculture, Mr. Vail and I are always excited to talk to each other about our work.

4. What do you hope to achieve over the course of the Mentor Fellowship?

Over the course of the Mentor Fellowship, I hope to continue working towards institutionalizing the local foods programs in Oberlin College’s Campus Dining Service and initiate the process of buying locally at other colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio. The Oberlin College CDS local foods program that I helped begin is still like a baby learning how to walk: It is starting to stand on its own feet, but has the potential to fall down if there is not somebody there to guide it on its way to walking on its own. By using Oberlin College as a successful model, I hope to expand the “farms to colleges” model to a regional level.

My ultimate vision is to create enough demand for locally produced food in colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio to support a regional distribution infrastructure that would give small local farmers in Ohio enough reliable income to continue farming. By supporting small local farmers in Ohio, we will not only help sustain a dwindling farming population, but we will also protect the environment and improve student nutrition and food awareness. Rural Northeast Ohio is under an immense threat from urban sprawl, making agriculture far less profitable than selling land to developers. By supporting small-scale farmers in Northeast Ohio, we will be able to preserve open space, support sustainable agricultural practices, and reduce air pollution by decreasing the distance that food is transported. College students will benefit from the pleasures of eating fresh in-season produce and will obtain more nutrition from local foods that are picked when ripe. College students will gain a greater sense of connection to where their food comes from through educational campaigns; and will become more responsible consumers when they graduate.

The promotion of a regional food system is an economic development strategy that is often overlooked. The purchase of locally grown foods keeps money within the region to support local jobs and businesses. The enormous purchasing power of college campus dining services has the potential to make a considerable impact in the local economy. At a small school of only 3,000 students such as Oberlin College, the director of CDS told me that the 3-acre OSAP farm that CDS purchased from could sell everything it produced to the college without even making a dent in the dining services’ overall food needs. If only a small percentage of Ohio campus dining service budgets were spent on local foods, the impact on local farmers and the local economy would be dramatic.

Although an additional year’s worth of effort is only a start in the course of achieving my ultimate vision, the support of the Compton Mentor Fellowship would come at a critical time that quite possibly would ensure the success of the Oberlin CDS’s local foods program. I hope that the Compton Mentor Fellowship will give me the opportunity to continue the momentum I have already built up with Oberlin CDS’ local foods program until it can run on its own. By helping to start the ball rolling at other schools in Northeast Ohio who want to create local foods programs, the cause for local foods can spread even further. It is likely that within five to ten years, colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio will be regularly purchasing local foods and greatly contributing to local agriculture and the local economy.

5. In what ways will the Compton Mentor Fellowship contribute to shaping your life’s work?
I see my life’s work as supporting small-scale sustainable agriculture. This work could take many forms: becoming a small-scale organic grower, working for nonprofits that promote sustainable agriculture and family farmers, or working as a distributor of local foods. The Compton Mentor Fellowship would be an invaluable opportunity for me to improve my understanding of each one of these roles and how they are all connected. Whether I decide to become an organic farmer, work for a nonprofit, become a local foods distributor, or all three during my lifetime, the Compton Mentor Fellowship would prepare me to better meet the challenges that each of these roles face.

The majority of people who take on these various roles struggle daily to fund their work. The generous support of the Compton Mentor Fellowship would give me the privilege of being able to learn and do as much as I can without worrying about how to make ends meet. This financial cushion would allow me to learn more about small-scale organic agriculture by affording me the time and money to attend farming conferences, visit model farms and distribution networks, and read related literature. I will be able to get much accomplished by having the time to devote my full energies to the promotion of local foods in colleges. The Compton Mentor Fellowship is an once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to pursue a project I am passionate about and gain knowledge and experience that will inform my life’s work.

MENTOR FELLOWSHIP PLAN
1. Please give a detailed description of your plans for the Compton Mentor Fellowship, including a budget.

Project Descriptions
The projects that I plan to initiate during the Fellowship can be divided into three types of focus:
1) Projects focused on improving Oberlin College’s local foods program
2) Projects focused on starting up local foods programs at other Northeast Ohio colleges and universities
3) Projects focused on the national “farms to colleges” movement
The distinctions between these different types of projects are not rigid, as many projects are beneficial for all three local, regional and national levels. The detailed descriptions of my plans for the Compton Mentor Fellowship are explained below.

1) As part of the effort to improve Oberlin College’s local foods program, I plan to:

ð Assess the potential of local processing facilities to produce more value-added local products that could be purchased year-round. I will visit pre-existing kitchens such as the ACENET Community Kitchen Incubator in Athens, Ohio and a “chop shop” in Cleveland. I hope to connect farmers with pre-existing processing facilities or create new ones in Oberlin College kitchens.

ð Increase education and marketing to students about local foods through improved advertising and local foods events. I plan to create posters for the dining halls with photos and descriptions of the farmers that we purchase from. I will organize the 2nd Annual All-Ohio meal that will feature local foods and educate students about the benefits of local sustainable agriculture. Field trips will also be organized to offer students the opportunity to visit the farms that provide their food.

ð Organize winter roundtable discussions between the dining service administrators and local farmers to plan for the coming year. This will also include field trips for farmers to see the Oberlin College dining facilities and for dining service administrators to visit the farms that they buy from.

ð Pursue additional local vendors and facilitate the distribution of their products. This will entail initially working as a liaison between new vendors and the CDS managers until purchasing relationships are firmly established.

2) As part of the effort to start up local foods programs at other Northeast Ohio colleges and universities, I plan to:

ð Produce and maintain a “farms to colleges” website and list serve. This website will include information about Oberlin College’s local foods programs and advice for students at other schools who want their dining services to buy local. This website will also serve as a regional resource on local agriculture by providing information about small farmers in Ohio and Ohio agriculture organizations. This is a project that I am currently working on that requires both further development and ongoing maintenance.

ð Organize workshops on “farms to colleges” programs for Ohio farmer organizations and conferences, dining service administrators, and student environmental groups. I will shape these workshops to address these different audiences on the potential and logistics of establishing local foods programs in campus dining services. I will organize workshops to meet on an individual basis with these groups and also in conjunction with conferences with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, Innovative Farmers of Ohio, Ohio Fruit and Vegetable Congress, and others.

ð Conduct market research of the college and university dining services in Northeast Ohio. With the aid of Oberlin student interns, we will investigate what these dining services are purchasing, how much they are spending on food, and how much of their current purchases are local. We will also interview the local farmers that Oberlin purchases from about their experiences in selling to the college. This will help us understand where local products can most easily be incorporated into these dining systems and how much local farmers stand to benefit.

ð Develop interest at other targeted schools for buying local and help ease their transition to local purchasing. I will consult with interested schools on how to work through the bureaucracy of dining services, how to find local vendors and coordinate the distribution of their products, and how to market local foods to students.

3) As part of the effort to further the national “farms to colleges” movement, I plan to:

ð Visit colleges with exemplary local foods programs and model local foods distribution networks. I will visit Bates College in Maine, University of Wisconsin, and Iowa State in order to learn from established college-based local foods programs. I will visit local distributing networks within Ohio like the Mt. Hope Produce Auction and Premier Produce in Cleveland. I will also visit local food distributors outside of Ohio like the Red Tomato in Boston, the Local Food Brokering Project in Iowa, the Southeast Minnesota Food Network and Veritable Vegetables in San Francisco.

ð Coordinate my local foods efforts with other nonprofits working for sustainable agriculture. I will maintain contact with other nonprofits that support sustainable agriculture to increase the potential for collaboration. I am currently in contact with Kristen Markley of the Community Food Security Coalition, who directs their “Farms to Colleges” campaign. She is interested in collaborating with me to work with Bon Apetit (Oberlin College’s dining service management company) on developing a national local purchasing program for colleges and universities.

ð Produce a report of my research and experience in establishing local foods programs in colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio. I will include recommendations for further action and share the report on my website.

Project Timeline

Due to the seasonal nature of working with local agriculture, the timeline for what I hope to accomplish must be coordinated with the rhythms of nature. In addition, my goals are also dependent on the schedules of those working within the academic school year. All of the key players that I intend to work with (farmers, distributors, dining service administrators, and students) tend to be extremely busy people, so it is important to time what I hope to accomplish with the lulls in their schedules. Below is the projected timeline of when I would initiate the various projects I plan to be involved in. There will be overlap with some activities from one month to the next, and a few projects listed on the bottom of the chart will be ongoing throughout the whole year.

Month Projects Initiated
JUNE A. Research local ag. scene: accompany mentor on distr. routes,
visit local produce auctions
JULY A. Research processing facilities: visit ACENET, "chop shop" in Cleveland
B. Create signs featuring local farmers for Oberlin CDS
AUGUST A. Plan for CDS All-Ohio meal and farm field trips
SEPTEMBER A. All-Ohio meal, farm field trips
B. Organize local foods workshops for NE Ohio student enviro. groups
OCTOBER A. Facilitate workshops for NE Ohio student enviro. groups
NOVEMBER A. Visit model local foods programs in colleges and model distr. networks
DECEMBER A. Organize roundtable discussions and field trips for CDS and local farmers
B. Vacation 2 weeks
JANUARY A. Facilitate roundtable discussions and field trips for CDS and local farmers
B. Organize and facilitate workshops for Ohio farmers conferences
FEBRUARY A. Initiate market research of NE Ohio dining services
B. Interview local farmers that sell to Oberlin
MARCH A. Initiate consulting with other colleges interested in purchasing locally
APRIL A. Continue market research and consulting
MAY A. Write research report

Ongoing A. Pursue additional local vendors
B. Maintain website
C. Maintain contact with nonprofits

Proposed Budget
1. Living expenses ($25,200)
a. Housing (rent, utilities) $600/month
b. Food $500/month
c. Communications (phone, fax, internet) $250/month
d. Local transportation (car) $650/month
e. Other (household items, clothing, etc.) $100/month

2. Mentor Honorarium/Reimbursement ($5,000)
a. Payment to mentor $5,000
3. Travel ($5,800)
a. To and from Fellowship site, conferences $3,000
b. Food, lodging, etc. $1,800
c. California Compton Gathering $1,000
4. Research ($1,500)
a. Conference registration $1,000
b. Books, journals, etc. $500
5. Equipment, materials, and supplies ($2,500)
a. Digital camera $500
b. Laptop computer $1,500
c. Printer $150
d. Fax machine $150
e. Computer programs $200


TOTAL BUDGET FOR FELLOWSHIP YEAR: $40,000

2. Proposed Mentor’s name, affiliation and contact information:

Karl Knopp
Ag Access
9297 Olga Dr.
Streetsboro, OH 44241
Home: (330) 626-2129 Cell: (330) 352-9707

3. Describe why you have identified this person as a primary Mentor.

I first talked to Karl two years ago while I was in the early stages of researching how to get local food into CDS. I had called numerous farmers to ask about their interest in selling to the college, in addition to Karl who distributed maple syrup to the Oberlin co-ops. While most of the farmers I talked to gave me brief “yes or no” answers to my questions, Karl spent over an hour with me on the phone trying to understand what I was doing and eager to get involved and help in any way he could. Since that initial conversation, Karl has generously taken me under his wing and has taught me all about local agriculture and distribution.

Karl is a distributor of local foods and plants produced mainly by the Amish community in central Ohio. He grew up on a farm in Ohio and managed his family farm for a number of years. He has a vast understanding and intimate experience with the local agriculture scene. Despite his involvement in numerous projects ranging from helping his Amish producers with season extension techniques to finding the best way to market heirloom tomatoes, Karl has always made the time to teach me about agriculture in this area. Karl has offered his time and resources to bring me out to Amish country to meet the farmers that he works with. He has been very committed to attending the meetings and conferences I have organized to discuss the possibilities of selling local food to CDS. Every time I see him he brings me a stack of articles and farming catalogs to peruse. Our conversations tend to revolve around the trials and tribulations of supporting local agriculture, and I always learn something new when I am with him.

I chose Karl to be my “official” Mentor for the fellowship first and foremost because he has already played that role in my life since the first time I met him. He is familiar with almost all of the aspects involved with getting locally produced food to people’s tables: He knows how to grow food sustainably, knows the people that do it, knows how to transport the food, and knows how to market it to the people who buy it. He is one of the most committed people I know working to support local farmers. Karl works hands-on with local farmers everyday in the process of selling and delivering their products to his customers all over Ohio. Karl understands what it takes to support family farmers on an experiential level that puts theory into practice.

Karl will be able to help me with the nitty gritty logistics of local foods distribution. He knows a myriad of farmers and has many connections to other key players in local agriculture in this area who could help me in my project. Being a distributor himself, he may play a key role in actually physically distributing local products to Northeast Ohio colleges and universities because there are few distributors in the area who distribute local food. Our pre-existing friendship will make us more productive because we already understand how each other operates. Karl has been very generous in sharing his tremendous wealth of knowledge with me. I think that the possibility of being able to work more closely with Karl would benefit me greatly, and benefit local farmers even more.