Geer St. Learning Garden Summer Internship
During the summer of 2023, I actively engaged with community-building efforts at the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Geer St. Learning Garden in Durham, NC. Inter-Faith, a non-profit I had closley worked with in high school, is a non-profit with the aim of alleviating food insecurity in North Carolina and goes beyond to emphasize this aim within a goal of nurturing healthy communities and providing environmental education - encompassed in thier slogan “Feed, Teach, Grow.”
As intern, I aimed to gain a nuanced understanding of how community systems are constructed, nurtured, and sustained. While seemingly distant from my usual media work, this opportunity allowed me to connect with people in the environment and gain insights into the intricate production processes at a close-knit, non-profit scale - thereby gaining access to all levels of operations from Communication to Agriculture departments to even meeting with executive employees to better understand how individuals in these roles effectively operated both in collaboration and independently.
My responsibilities as an intern were extremely diverse, ranging from tending to the garden and working with dedicated volunteers to participate in the planning and organization of community events.
I worked alongside my boss and Geer St. Garden Manager, Mikey, to help plan and conduct community events such as weekly Garden Workshops, as seen here.
Final independent Intern project
As part of my internship, I completed an independent project. My supervisor suggested the idea of creating a short promo video for the garden, recognizing its potential to expand the network and strengthen community bonds. Eager to undertake this challenge, I documented my internship journey by coordinating with local non-profit leaders, garden volunteers, food pantries, and other community members who played a role in the cohesion and ongoing work of the garden.
The resulting video was shared with all participants and the non-profit, fostering community within a shared visual narrative. Moreover, I collaborated with the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Communications team, providing them with over 10 hours of quality footage for various promotional content pages.
Throughout this experience, I cultivated a profound sense of community and the systems essential to such an undertaking. Further, I gained a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies (difficulties very much included) of undertaking independent production projects. Relying on myself to produce, film, record, interview, and edit content from interviews, events, and daily garden activities was no small feat, and I definitely came away with an appreciation for the value of creating production networks. I had a fantastic time learning about this network, this community, this garden, and I am privileged to have been able to conduct this project with the help of Inter-Faith Food Shuttle.
View the promotional video below:
This video encompasses hours of interview footage and other content that, due to time conflicts, was unable to make it into this short video. However, that is not the last time the footage will be seen or shared, and I am actively working with it as I continue to develop my editing skills. I am working to complete a short documentary that elaborates on this footage and better speaks to my fantastic summer, to be released by the end of the year.