On the Road to the Dominican Republic with the NCSU Stop Hunger Now Collaborative!

Beginning in August 2013, students in the Advanced Social Work and Evaluation course in the Department of Social Work began a partnership with Stop Hunger Now (SHN), an international hunger relief organization, based in Raleigh, NC. Students have been working on a number of monitoring and evaluation projects, and this blog is to highlight one in particular, our trip to the Dominican Republic to visit 14 partner organizations, all providing food aid in conjunction with other community development efforts. We will be traveling with our Dominican partner NGO, CitiHope and hope to learn more about their local partners, their specific strategies to address hunger, and ways SHN is moving towards its mission to "end hunger in our lifetime" in the Dominican Republic. As a new Assistant Professor at NCSU (in my second year) I feel incredibly lucky to have found an academic home that prioritizes community engagement and community-based research. I want to thank our department and the Office of Outreach and Engagement for funds that helped to make this collaboration possible. I look forward to hearing from our graduate students about how this experience impacts their understanding of research, evaluation, and strategies to address the root causes of hunger and poverty.