At the start of the spring semester, the Rotaract Club RSO at the U of A entered into the NewGen Peacebuilders training. The training focused on helping build positive peace in our communities and tackling food insecurity. The organization members were tasked with training every Saturday from 1-5 p.m.

Throughout the team's training, they learned how to build positive peace, the eight pillars of peace and other various training to help nonprofit organizations. They then followed up with local nonprofit organizations to get a deeper look into the mainframe of food insecurity in Northwest Arkansas. After gathering data from over 30 local nonprofits, they presented the information found, and some possible solutions they had, to the rest of the NewGen Peacebuilders. Finally, after their presentation, they submitted their findings and possible ideas to help food insecurity in Northwest Arkansas to the OpenIDEO, a food systems process challenge.

The challenge was built to increase possible systematic change in food insecurity globally. After a few weeks of consideration, the team was selected to participate in the challenge. The team's next steps involve meeting with other members of the process in the upcoming week and hopefully expanding on their ideas for food insecurity. 

Go to the Rotaract Club's full submission to the program. 

If you would like to get more information on this, please email tsmondai@uark.edu more information.