Falcon's Nest Inventory System
Madison’s school has a
food and clothing pantry called the Falcon’s Nest. When it was
started, the purpose of the pantry was to provide disadvantaged
students with snacks during the school day. Soon after the creation of
the Falcon’s Nest, many students were identified as needing food at
home on the weekends. Madison volunteered with the Falcon’s Nest and
learned that the process of sorting, bagging, and distributing the
collected food for the weekends was very time consuming and did not
allow the Falcon’s Nest to serve many students.
To
understand the issue more, Madison researched food insecurity and
discovered that this issue affects people worldwide, not just students
at her school. She found out that many schools across the country have
similar food pantry programs as her school and that they have systems
to track and sort the food donations in an efficient manner that
allows them to help more students. Being inspired by these other
programs, Madison determined that the best way to tackle food
insecurity at her school was to get organized. With guidance from her
project advisor, Madison created an online tracking system that
allowed volunteers to catalog the food donations and sort it based on
student’s dietary restrictions.
One challenge Madison
faced was that her initial ideas and plans for the inventory system
did not work out the way she intended. Instead of giving up, she made
adjustments to the food tracking and inventory process until she came
up with a system that worked for the Falcon’s Nest.
Madison says that her project helped her develop her communication
skills and present information in a clear manner. Madison’s advice to
others working on their Silver Award is to not give up even if things
don’t go as planned.
Silver Award Girl Scout, Madison Boucher
21 Apr 2020
