Needs From: Volunteer Center of Kitsap County

Kitsap Harvest’s Grow-A-Row project is intended to connect home gardeners’ excess garden harvest to Kitsap County’s vulnerable populations without access to nutritious food, prevent food waste from home producers and farmers markets, and build community capacity for food production and sharing. Kitsap County gardeners, connected by a network of donation stations, distribution volunteers, and our aggregation station, can deliver fresh seasonal locally grown produce to feed communities most at risk for food insecurity and malnutrition and build regional sustainability and resilience through grassroots community care.

The growth of the program will require coordination of many volunteers, destinations for donated produce, community gardens, farmers market donation stations, as well as building the framework and capacity to grow in the future. Establishing this network will require a number of skills and responsibilities to be shared across a committee of dedicated volunteers.

The Kitsap Harvest Grow-A-Row program will be facilitated by a working committee consisting of 6 volunteer members. The meeting frequency of the committee will likely vary over the course of the calendar year. Certain categories of responsibilities will have more to do in some seasons than others. The committee will need to be adaptable and collaborative.

These are initial conceptions of the needs of the committee and the different responsibilities that can be grouped by skill set into roles for individual members. In reality, committee members can flexibly collaborate and share skill sets, time and energy amongst themselves as a group according to the emergent needs and goals of the program. 

 Grow A Row, for yourself, for your neighbor, for your community.

The categories of responsibilities/intended roles of these committee members are as follows:

Committee Role 5: Committee Facilitator

This member will facilitate committee meetings and coordinate closely with all other members of the committee as well as the board of Kitsap Harvest. 

Responsibilities will include: 

Coordinate between the different members of the committee Schedule and facilitate committee meetings Take minutes/notes for committee meetings  Track time for committee meetings Follow up with committee members after meetings on any remaining questions, needs, or action items that come up. Track other ongoing activities to ensure supportive collaboration Develop and expand new programming under Grow-A-Row in order to meet the evolving needs of the program. Seek external funding sources, write, and apply for grants to support ongoing and newly developed programs. Coordinate with other committee members including the communication member, volunteer coordinator, data manager, gardening resource guide, and accounts manager. Regularly communicate  and coordinate with the board of Kitsap Harvest.

 Glean Lead

This person will work closely with the Kitsap Harvest team to learn and become competent at being a skilled leader. All we need is a willingness to learn!

Glean Leaders are responsible for leading urban fruit harvests with a group of volunteers. They can pre-check sites to assure the fruit is ripe for the picking. At the glean,  Leaders are responsible for recording the harvest data. Assuring the produce gets dropped off to designated drop locations either by transporting it and delegation of other volunteers.

Since all volunteers get to take home a portion of the harvest, Glean Leaders have access to fresh fruit all season long. This is the perfect opportunity for people who like to preserve food and who want to give back to the community. We ask that Glean Leaders be available on a consistent day and can commit to the entire harvest season.

Currently we need a driver and driver assistant to take over every other Thursday afternoon's route, delivering boxes of food starting on Thursday, November 16th, from 1pm to 3pm.

Generally, we are looking for volunteers to help with produce pick-up from several of our existing routes. The ideal volunteer commitment is every other week on a set schedule for one of our pickup routes. Our collection routes include Farmers Markets, Neighborhood Donation Stations, Partner Organizations providing both fresh and recovered produce. Using the preferred method of transport, the produce is collected and then delivered to the Kitsap Harvests aggregation/distribution hub.

Donation Stations - We have Neighborhood Donation Stations through Kitsap. We've organized these into two routes, one route from Kingston to Bremerton, and the other route from Port Orchard to Bremerton, both routes ending at the Kitsap Harvest Aggregation and Distribution Hub in Bremerton. Both of these routes are collected from either Sunday evening or Monday morning, weekly. Drivers will be using their own vehicle and coordinating with Neighborhood Captains to confirm produce pickup. (Seasonal)

 

Farmers Market Drivers - Collecting from either the Port Orchard Farmers Market on Saturday (1:45pm -2:15) or Bremerton Community Farmers market on Thursday (6:45pm -7:15)The food is collected from the Market vendors, documented, and then transported, using your own vehicle to our Bremerton Aggregation and Distribution Hub. (Seasonal)

 

Partner Org produce pickup and recovery- This regular route done on Tuesday and Thursday (with a priority in filling Thursday shift first) is picking up produce from 3 locations, using the Isuzu NPR 16 ft box truck (no special license needed) Drivers would pick-up food and bring it back to the warehouse for weighing and sorting by volunteers. 

 

Truck Lead- We need a point person who can look after the care of our truck. It is important keeping-up on truck maintenance log and communicating any issues ASAP. We have several volunteer drivers who use this truck, but since they are envolved in other operations of Kitsap Harvest, we can not ask them to take on one more responsibility... it would be nice to have someone as the dedicated point person to check the basics for operation on a weekly/monthly basis... maybe give the truck a wash and or check the mileage and report if the truck needs maintnance.

If you have any questions  let us know at info@kitsapharvest.org.