Negotiating for Good: How a University of St. Thomas Class is Supporting a St. Paul Food Shelf
Andrea Thomas is passionate about listening to her neighbors and being mindful of the impact she’s having on her community, which is how she ended up as director of Nourish Food Shelf.
The Frogtown-area food shelf in St. Paul grew out of a partnership with Second Harvest Heartland during the pandemic. It started as an on-site meal program for kids at Mount Olivet Lab School where Andrea is executive director. But when Andrea’s daughter told her about a group of girls who were attending meals at the café who said their families didn't have food for the week, she knew she needed to do more. Nourish expanded their services to provide groceries, fresh produce, and other food shelf items to neighbors in the Frogtown area and beyond.
“That's our goal—to always be reflective of what's happening in our community,” said Andrea.
A Second Harvest Heartland truck delivering fresh food to Nourish.
When Nourish was asked to work with students enrolled in the University of St. Thomas’s Negotiating with a Positive Influence course, Andrea thought it was an amazing opportunity. The goal of the class is for students to learn negotiation skills and put them to use in ways that improve their community. Helping Nourish expand their audience and bring in financial donations is a semester-long project that students will be working in teams to accomplish.
“I love their enthusiasm,” said Andrea of the students. “It's really interesting to see [Nourish] from the students’ perspective and to know what they're learning. I think I'm probably learning as much as they are!”
Sophia Shamp is a senior taking the course and majoring in leadership management and data analytics. She explains that building awareness of Nourish is the first step to bringing in donations for the food shelf. “We need to use our negotiation skills to get people to donate—to have conversations with people, to understand, apply, and share Nourish’s mission and purpose,” said Sophia.
Students have come up with many ideas for promoting the project with Nourish, including putting up posters in area coffee shops, posting on social media, reaching out to local businesses for donations, tabling on campus, going door to door in the neighborhood, or even hosting a Pickleball event with the registration fees going to Nourish.
A Nourish Food Shelf outdoor food distribution.
Alec Boland is a senior majoring in business leadership, management and actuarial science. Following Andrea’s visit to his class to introduce Nourish and the project for the semester, Alec went to volunteer at one of their food distributions the following weekend.
“I think it was super cool to see the variety of [foods] that they were distributing and the amount of healthy options as well, like apples, corn, and peppers,” said Alec. “I would be super happy if I could convince some of my friends to come volunteer with me here or just to raise awareness of the work Nourish is doing. They're super close to our campus, just like a 10-minute drive.”
The students involved in the course say that this work has taught them a lot about food insecurity in their community. “I've learned that it is way more common than you think and that anybody can really fall into a state of food insecurity,” said Sophia.
Andrea is hopeful that the course will inspire students to connect more with their St. Paul community.
“I just want the students to have a really good experience, I want them to actually see the community,” said Andrea. “Sometimes we just drive by places, and we don't really see the people. I want them to know the heart and the passion that I have for the community, and I want that to mean something to them. But I also want them to develop their own connection with it.”