Danna Klein '07 (Fort Lee, N.J.) is hard at work in the New York soup kitchens this summer. The public policy major has a Levitt Fellowship to investigate the efficiencies and inefficiencies of food-related services in the non-profit sector. Advised by Rick Werner, the John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy, Klein will be studying a range of food services which operate in the East Harlem area of New York City. Her goal, she explains, is "to evaluate and to make recommendations based on inefficiencies in the public and private sectors in addressing social justice issues."
Klein had originally intended to study the infrastructure of non-profit organizations, but she soon realized that it was too large a project for 10 weeks of summer research. So she narrowed her study and chose to focus on food-related services, specifically soup kitchens, food pantries, and the food stamp program.
In food pantries and soup kitchens, what concerns Klein is the balance between quantity of food and nutritional value. She wants to know how well the providers meet the "mouths to fill" quota while still retaining size of portion and quality of food. Often the compromise comes when a kitchen or pantry will fall back on cheap food with little nutritional value. This is only a stop-gap, of course, since this type of food can cause obesity and thus more problems in the future.
Klein will also be examining the federal government's food stamp program, the largest of 14 government-run food assistance programs. She is interested in how well-educated people are about their eligibility for food stamps; her suspicion is that many do not know they can get the stamps, and if they know they are eligible, do not know where to register. Klein also hopes to be able to make some conclusions about the lack of coordination between the public and private sectors.
"This is the biggest research project I've ever done," Klein explains. "It's been quite a struggle finding what I want and how to execute it." She has spent the first part of the summer reading available literature and is now just beginning the second half of her study, which will be field work. Klein plans to concentrate on the East Harlem neighborhood in New York and interview the directors of local aid programs. She plans to speak to the people being served, especially to ask them if they have food stamps, and why. Then Klein hopes to interview the government members who run the food stamp program. The hardest part, she says, is "I keep having to adjust the questions that I'm asking, the topic even…to make the project feasible."
Klein became interested in a Levitt Grant because it "seemed like a really good opportunity to get into something more in depth." She is passionate about public policy and social justice issues and has just returned from a semester in Brazil doing public policy work. On campus she has run volunteer groups for HAVOC and been a member of their executive board. She is in the Personal Justice Club and will be coordinating the Alternative Spring Break for 2007. This project, she explains, is "a combination of my two interests."
This is not, however, Klein's first summer working for a good cause. Last summer she interned at a non-profit in D.C. where she researched abandoned properties in post-industrialized cities. She is looking forward to more research for her senior thesis, for which she plans to take advantage of the Public Policy Department's "public contract" thesis option. She hopes that her work this summer will tie in somehow: "if I don't pursue [this summer's research] directly, then indirectly." After Hamilton, Klein hopes to do "something relating to social justice" such as work at a non-profit organization or at a thinktank. Later she plans for graduate school and a further degree in public policy.
The grant which funds her work is the Levitt Research Fellowship, funded by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. It is intended to fund research in a public affairs issue and allows a student to spend 10 weeks working closely with a faculty advisor.
- Lisbeth Redfield
