My internship with Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD) was both challenging and insightful. Having finished my internship, I now have a greater understanding of the local farming industry in central Appalachia and how non-profits operate within the landscape.
ASD is a non-profit who seeks to connect small farmers in Appalachia to bigger, more financially viable markets and to provide agriculture education and employment for residents in the surrounding counties. ASD has a variety of programs and projects to accomplish this mission, and I had a large amount of autonomy throughout my internship to decide which projects to work on.
Before starting at ASD, I knew that one of their weak spots was utilizing data science to evaluate company performance. During my first week, I spent my time in meetings absorbing all the information about each program and noting where they could utilize data to better run their programs. At this point, however, I also realized how complex each part of their organization was. Their Food Hub, for example, is a middle-man operation to package and distribute fresh produce from local farmers to retailers, and it had yet to earn a profit. Simply offering solutions like raising prices and lowering costs did not cut it. Factors like limited rainfall due to climate change could completely change the viability of the enterprise at any moment. Furthermore, I learned how much of the business relied on fostering strong relationships with local vendors, farmers, and residents to keep it going strong. They receive the majority of their grants by showcasing their impact on the community, which I was able to assist with through data analysis.
The primary project I worked on this summer was creating data visualization and survey filtering tools for the Grow Your Own (GYO) program. I was able to create dashboards to visualize data metrics in their grant reports, such as pounds of produce grown by GYO participants based on crop and year. I also worked on evaluating which participants the GYO program should select based on demographic information in the intake survey responses, and on creating a filtering template that can do this automatically. I learned that while it is helpful to create data analysis tools for a company, it is even more important to make them replicable and user-friendly for people unfamiliar with data analysis. A final key takeaway I got from this internship is to find a company whose mission is shared by its employees, like ASD. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the passion each employee at ASD had for what they do, and being able to show their impact through data analysis was especially rewa