Angelina Caradonna
Volunteer Experience
Local Matters
Local Matters is a non-profit organization based in Columbus, Ohio, focused on creating healthy communities through food education, access, and advocacy, with the goal of reducing chronic diseases overall. They lead many educational groups concentrating on a variety of topics including healthy foods in cooking, gardening, wellness, and medical fields.
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I have mainly volunteered in their Cooking Matters program, where I have the role of supporting the chef in conducting their community cooking classes. I prep food items before the class begins and clean up after the class has ended. I also assist the students by answering cooking questions and aiding in recipe completion. Since I love to experiment in my kitchen at home, I take pleasure in combining my knowledge of cooking with my knowledge of nutrition to help others incorporate healthy meals in a fun way.
National Italian American Foundation 40th Anniversary Gala
I had the opportunity to work as a volunteer during the National Italian American Foundation's (NIAF) 40th anniversary gala in Washington D.C. As a volunteer, I assisted in the facilitation of events throughout the weekend. This included aiding the professional photographers on both the cocktail and gala evenings, as well as running the children's booth during the expo-Italiana event during the day. I also had the task of setting up and tearing down equipment throughout the weekend as well as escorting Italian and Italian-American celebrities in the evenings. Through this event I met many people from around the country with similar backgrounds as me, while having the privilege to serve a national organization.
Mount Carmel West Hospital
During the summer of 2015 I volunteered weekly at Mount Carmel West Hospital in Columbus. I worked under a dietitian in Nutrition Services, where I prepared meals and served the patients at meal times. I enjoyed learning how a hospital's meal service differs than that of other food service institutions. I also had the opportunity to work under the nursing staff on various floors of the hospital. Here, I assisted the nurses by fetching goods for the patients, consisting of water, blankets, and other small items. I learned how to interact with patients and gained an inside look on how a hospital functions.
Opening Minds Through Art (OMA)
Opening Minds through Art (OMA) is a program run by Miami University that helps individuals who have dementia. The program travels to different nursing homes around Oxford, and conducts an abstract art session in which elders with dementia can participate in. This abstract art gives the elderly a means to express themselves, as many with severe dementia have lost the ability to have a voice for themselves.
I began volunteering with the program as a freshman, but also became involved through a gerontology class I took my sophomore year. During this semester I met weekly with the same woman, Ruth, who had dementia, and helped her overcome some of the obstacles of her disease by helping her create art through constant, planned interaction. Through this experience I learned how to interact with an individual one on one, which will help me in the future with nutrition counseling, but I also learned that helping others is not always a one way street, that Ruth helped me too, in ways she may never know.