Hi everyone! My name is Monica D’Agostino and I am currently a dietetic intern with Sodexo at the Allentown, PA campus. What I love about the Allentown campus, is that it is a part time internship that allows me to fill my community hour requirements over the course of the entire internship. I am currently in my intermediate clinical rotation; however, I have been completing some of my community hours throughout the past few months. One of my favorite experiences in my internship thus far has been my participation in the Cooking Matters program in Allentown. Cooking Matters is a program that is conducted through the Second Harvest Food Bank. The program is designed to provide cooking and nutrition classes to those in areas that may not have access to pertinent nutrition information. During my first experience, I had the privilege of working with several volunteers at Marvine Elementary School in Bethlehem, PA. The group of volunteers and myself brought ingredients and cooking supplies to the elementary school every Wednesday afternoon and conducted a cooking and nutrition class for some of the parents at the school. We went over concepts such as MyPlate, healthy snacking, eating together as a family, and navigating grocery stores. After teaching the nutrition and cooking concepts to the parents, we would all sit down and eat the food we had prepared together (I included a picture as an example to what our family style meals looked like). The program lasted six weeks and I was amazed at the quick connections that I made with the parents who attended the program. I got to learn a lot about their stories and backgrounds and loved seeing their faces light up when they would return the following weeks to tell us that they had made their provided recipes at home. This was an extremely rewarding and fun experience that I would recommend to any intern!
