Mobile-Friendly Food Safety Education for Short-term Volunteers in Food and Agricultural Nonprofit Organizations

Commodities

Practices

The program aims to improve sanitation practices and decrease food waste generated during food distribution and donation management of volunteers among food and agricultural nonprofit organizations (FANOs). The team will develop a fast-paced mobile-friendly course to increase knowledge, skill, and self-efficacy in sanitation and food conservation best practices during prepared food distribution or donation management for volunteers. The program aims to build positive attitudes about food safety and waste prioritizing a volunteer subset: short-term, compulsory volunteers.  

FANOs are critical to food systems. FANOs influence the social health of these systems by protecting good food as a right, ensuring food security, and fighting for human rights to be observed along the value chain. Florida’s 904 FANOs support and represent farmers (e.g., farmers associations and trade groups), produce food (e.g., urban farms and community gardens), distribute food or provide a market for distributions (e.g., food banks and farmers markets), and provide food directly to consumers (e.g., food pantries and soup kitchens). FANO volunteering requires little commitment and, typically, low-skilled labor. FANO tasks may include harvesting, sorting, packaging, collecting or storing donations, or serving and delivering prepared foods. 

Many low-resourced FANOs lean on the labor of volunteers, most commonly compulsory volunteers. These volunteers have externally driven motives for providing their unpaid labor (e.g., court-ordered community service work and school-required volunteer hours). These volunteers are less committed to the FANOs mission and values than the commonly pictured altruistic volunteer. Thus, teaching the compulsory volunteer audience using a short, mobile-friendly course that targets attitudes and behaviors will be a more effective approach than more comprehensive, in-person volunteer teaching modalities. 

FANOs play important roles in food systems and necessitate evaluation of their food safety assurance within the production, preparation, storage, and distribution of food. Food recovery efforts that comply with food safety standards are a major means of rerouting consumable foods and combating food waste. Inadequate food safety behaviors among volunteers is a unique issue FANOs face driven by (1) high volunteer turnover and reduced training time and (2) large disparities between who is regulating and enforcing food safety in FANOs.  

FANO volunteer oversight is often the responsibility of farmers committed to community outreach, church leaders, kitchen managers, and sometimes other volunteers (henceforth volunteer managers) without volunteer management education. To ensure longevity and sustainability of the program, the program will ensure costs associated with volunteer management and education are low. The course will be easy to access and culturally competent. FANOs will receive a stipend for participation. 

The two-year program period will include two rounds of implementation. The program will be designed, implemented, and evaluated in Year 1. The implementation and outcome evaluations will inform a revision to be implemented and reevaluated in Year 2. The course be made available to FANOs statewide via UF/IFAS Extension. Compulsory volunteers may go to multiple FANOs to complete their assigned work hours. To avoid repeating the course, volunteers will be able to show their course completion to other FANOs through the Canvas app or a printed certificate of completion. 

The program goal is to improve sanitation practices and decrease food waste generated during food distribution and food donation management among FANO compulsory volunteers. The goal will be achieved through the following objectives: 

Objective 1: Increase knowledge and skill in sanitation and food conservation best practices among FANO short-term and compulsory volunteers. 

Objective 2: Increase FANO volunteers’ self-efficacy in sanitation and food conservation best practices during prepared food distribution or food donation management. 

Objective 3: Improve attitudes about food safety and waste among FANO short-term and compulsory volunteers. 

Objective 4: Ensure costs associated with FANO volunteer management and education are low.