In March, Jen helped plan and host the Washington Gleaner’s Conference in Redmond, Washington. This event featured gleaners from across Washington, with presentations from the Association of Gleaning Organizations, Making a Difference Foundation, Foodbank Farm, The Bow Farmhouse, and others (see the full list here). Topics ranged from ways to organize gleans on private farms to growing neighborhood connections. This event illustrated what the Washington Gleaning Network is all about: creating connections among gleaners to share knowledge and build community. In Redmond, partners discussed how to strategically store and process food, the necessity of culturally relevant foods, and the resource-sharing of expensive equipment. These conversations are exactly what the Washington Gleaning Network seeks to foster. 

Through her work as a VISTA member, Jen conducted site visits that showed how the needs, strengths, and weaknesses of gleaning organizations have changed as gleaning has evolved in Washington. Seeing the thematic overlaps between the site visits and the conference’s conversations highlights the complexity and scope of the challenges facing the gleaning community and emphasizes how Washington’s unique gleaning community, with over 40 organizations, can find solutions together. 
The conference represented a culmination of the Washington Gleaning Network’s work to connect the state’s gleaning community. The benefits the network provides to the state gleaning community inform Jen’s current project: building and updating a toolkit for potential gleaning networks. This toolkit is a living document that reflects the WGN’s ongoing efforts to expand its outreach and initiatives. All of these activities have one purpose in mind: supporting connections and collaboration in the hunger relief community.