UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Having surveyed for approximately two weeks and called 138 numbers, it was challenging to receive only 35 responses. However, the survey process as a whole reveals a lot about the community and is a jumping-off point for future surveying. In addition to writing a short report and an upcoming final report for the Blum Center, I will have a closing phone conversation with my project manager tomorrow. What has lingered closest to me since the completion of my IRC internship are certainly the profound, though completely foreign to me, challenges pointed out by multiple clients of the IRC. For example, one client impressed upon me the inaccessibility of affordable halal meat. He can only purchase it in specialty food stores and even there the price is unreliable. He noted that he should be able to buy it at large chain stores, where clients may otherwise shop, like Walmart. I had never considered how it may be restrictive to buy only halal meat and how larger stores should take that into ...

At this point in my project I have incorporated my supervisors notes into the first draft of the survey, asked questions regarding his changes, and begun to survey clients. Many of the changes he made were for the purposes of brevity and clarity. He removed the questions I had in place regarding favorite foods and whether the interviewee was the primary shopper, as well as an experimental question about community meals. He also managed to consolidate the multiple questions I had regarding food insecurity that were separated whether they interrogated price, unavailability or distance. I questioned these changes as I was concerned about the knowledge gap between shopper and interviewee that one report mentioned and elucidating rich responses to all aspects of food security. However, I ultimately incorporated each of his changes. At this time I have called 80 numbers intending to administer the survey with only 10 respondents. Their answers are so far similar in nature and offer good gu...

This August 2017 I am interning with the IRC to complete a project around food security and food preferences for the resettled refugee clients of the IRC. I will be designing a survey based on background reading in order to assess the primarily Afghani community of recent migrants. These surveys hope to address the potential location and offerings of a farm stand which would sell fresh produce and cater to the community. I will survey over the phone and collect responses which will lead me to make a results summary and recommendations going forward. Following months of thought and preparation, I am elated to experience this project come into being. The most surprising aspect of the experience, is, without a doubt, its seeming simplicity despite my previous conceptions that it would be much more complicated. In fact, its arc and development seems to hang, easily suspended before my eyes. It is so clear. I look forward to watching it unfold. Only a week into the process I have r...