Author: vchordiya1

Service Blog #7: Concrete Jungle

by vchordiya1

Hey everyone! I’m Viraj, and I have partnered up with Concrete Jungle this semester. In this blog, I would love to share my experience with the organization and the projects I undertook. Volunteering with Concrete Jungle was a big learning experience for me. During my time with Concrete Jungle, I worked on several projects that allowed me to contribute my skills and time to their mission. One of the most interesting and satisfying tasks I performed was analyzing their data and making sense of volunteer journeys using machine learning algorithms.

The first step in this project was to clean various datasets, merge them together, and conduct exploratory data analysis. This step helped me to understand the quality of data and identify general patterns. Next, I used deep learning algorithms to cluster similar journeys and identify patterns in volunteer behavior. This helped the organization understand how volunteers engage with the organization and identify areas for improvement.

Additionally, I volunteered for Freedom farmer’s market pickups every other Saturday with Elena. We collected left-over fresh produce from the Freedom farmer’s market and delivered it to a nearby soup kitchen called Intown Collaborative Ministries. It was a great opportunity to explore the market, talk to vendors, and meet many generous people. On average, we collected 30 pounds of fresh produce every other Saturday. This was a very rewarding experience because it allowed us to directly impact the community by ensuring that fresh, healthy food was not going to waste.

Finally, I also worked on the organization’s Doghead farm. I worked on terracing a slope on the farm with a few other volunteers. This involved leveling a hillside’s ground in sections so that the flat areas stack like stairs. This was a physically demanding task as we had to dig and unsoil the inclined part and level it with the flat portion of the farm, but it was incredibly satisfying to see the progress we made. It was also a great opportunity to connect with other volunteers and learn more about sustainable agriculture.

Overall, I believe that my engagement with this organization made a meaningful impact. By collecting and delivering fresh produce to soup kitchens, I was able to directly impact the community by providing healthy food to those in need. Additionally, by using my quantitative skills to help the organization analyze their data, I was able to provide valuable insights that will help them improve their volunteer engagement efforts. I believe that my final project can contribute to the organization in the future. For example, I was able to find some irregularities in the data collection process, which the organization can fix and would help them in the future. Moreover, the volunteer clustering algorithm I designed could help Concrete Jungle predict volunteer’s next move. Then the organization could explore various incentives to nudge volunteer behavior and maximize their full potential.  

Introduction: Viraj Chordiya

by vchordiya1

Hey there! Welcome to this introductory blogpost for the Honors 3280 service-learning course. I’m Viraj Chordiya, a senior at GSU majoring in economics and mathematics. I’m an international student from Nashik, the wine capital of India. I’m excited to share about this service-learning course and talk about my community partner Concrete Jungle!

In addition to satisfying the honors requirement, I was motivated to take this course for its community service component. I knew this was an excellent opportunity to get hands-on volunteering experience, understand some of the urban problems of Atlanta, and explore how our community partners are employing creative solutions to tackle them. The course is split equally into two components, in-person classes and community service. In the class section, we examined the relationship between nature and humans through various lenses like exploring different ideas of nature and the separation (or lack thereof) between nature and humans.

To engage in community service, I chose to work with Concrete Jungle, an Atlanta based non-profit, that finds creative ways to efficiently allocate fresh produce and fight food insecurity. They transform unused fruit trees into a healthy food source and organize various programs to farm, pick, and deliver fresh produce to those who need it the most.

I believe food is a simple yet powerful way to bring happiness and connect with others. Sharing food and having communal meals has been a big part of my Indian culture. Moreover, I love to cook, and feeding others brings me immense joy. I was inspired by Concrete Jungle’s mission of supporting food access by utilizing trees and land around the city, and hence chose to volunteer for them. I believe they have a unique approach to tackling food insecurity and minimizing waste. Through this service assignment, I’m excited to learn more about their sustainable gardening practices and their optimization methods that help them efficiently use all the fresh produce resources to fight food insecurity.