Rachel Fifer

Rachel grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she learned from a young age the blessing of her father's garden, which covered the expanse of their backyard.

Years later, she graduated from Wesleyan University with double majors in Environmental Studies and Latin American Studies with focuses on history, culture, and Spanish language.

She volunteered as an environmental education teacher with Forjadores Ambientales at an impoverished middle school in Santiago, Chile in 2010. The following year, she volunteered as a Fellow at CitySprouts, in Cambridge, MA, co-supervising summer programs focused on gardening and cooking in local middle schools. Later in 2011, Rachel created and organized a community event called Encuentro: for Community, For Humanity, a gathering to make space for the stories of individuals who are struggling for housing, education, health, freedom, justice, love, a voice, a space to exist, peace, respect, themselves, for our community, for our dignity, and for humanity (http://wesleying.org/2012/04/27/encuentro-for-community-for-humanity/). This story-focused, community event continues to this day.

Rachel worked as a Pantry Capacity Consultant with MANNA FoodBank's Outreach Team for one year in western North Carolina. She worked directly with 32 food pantries in 4 rural and urban counties. This work was a long-term process of contacting organizations, volunteering with them, touring their facilities, meeting clients, attending each organization's board meeting, conducting a 14 page interview with each director, and evaluating the sustainability and capacity of the organization in a number of categories (such as efficiency, funding & resources, administrative strength, community outreach, effectiveness, etc.). This extensive process gave Rachel invaluable insight into the value of getting to know an organization through direct interaction and through multiple lenses.

Rachel's Capacity Building service provided concrete experience with non-profit and welfare pitfalls, challenged her to ask the difficult questions about if we are truly helping our communities, and prepared her to interact with any personality, faith, or political belief. Getting to know each of these organizations has proved to Rachel that anyone passionate about these issues has something valuable to contribute.

Rachel is now on the road, conducting interviews for the Food Independence Network.