Hadley Montgomery
Executive Staff
This summer, New Haven, Connecticut will be home to Sewanee students Amelia Warnock (C’18) and Kelsey Arbuckle (C’19), who will working in internships funded by the Office of Civic Engagement.
Arbuckle will intern at the National Diaper Bank Network. According to Arbuckle, the organization “works to address the diaper need we have in America, because you cannot buy them on food stamps. If they don’t have them, then they can’t go to daycare because most daycares don’t allow cloth diapers, make you pay for them, or you have to bring them.” The Diaper Bank operates in 48 states and the District of Columbia.
Warnock’s internship combines work at the Fair Haven Community Health Center and New Haven Farms. The Fair Haven Community Health Center is a free health center for uninsured and underemployed community members, and New Haven Farms “grew out of a need to provide nutritious food to patients at the Fair Haven Community Health Center and has since become its own organization,” said Warnock.
The National Diaper Bank Network has many offices around the country. However, the office in New Haven is particularly small, which is a huge reason Arbuckle chose this internship. She wanted to be in an office where she truly got to know the people and the organization.
“I applied for it because Professor Paige Schneider mentioned it one day, and then she mentioned that there was an internship. I was like, that would be fun to work somewhere you have heard about,” Arbuckle explained.
Arbuckle is from the Mountain, and this will be her first time off the Mountain for an extended period of time. While in New Haven, Arbuckle and Warnock will be living together, along with another Sewanee student, in hopes of making the transition easier for everyone.
“I got really flustered, but I read all of these articles about New Haven, and I feel better about it. I am anxious in a good way—a happy anxious,” Arbuckle said.
The internship at New Haven Farms and Fair Haven Community Health Center will last eight weeks. Through these organizations, Warnock will work with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional aid patients to provide them with farmers’-market-quality food.
Warnock will attend organized diabetes and nutrition education classes in Spanish and English and work on urban farms with New Haven Farms. Along with growing food, Warnock will help teach cooking classes coordinated through New Haven Farms.
“I applied for this internship because I am interested in the intersection between food and health and I thought this internship was a good opportunity to combine my two passions,” said Warnock. “I realized I was applying to internships based on health and ones based on farming, and this really combined the two.”
The interns hope to take what they learn in New Haven and apply it to their Sewanee career and future career paths. If interested in following their travels, Arbuckle said they have “two whole months there! Catch me on Instagram!”