What is this all about?

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As you drive down Broadway, and through the Portland State University Campus, you can’t help but noticed the bridge that is emblazoned with the University’s motto: “Let Knowledge Serve the City.” At Portland State, this motto goes beyond mere words, but is at the heart of the Senior Capstone Program at Portland State.

The goal of the Capstone program, is to have a group of PSU Seniors, from multiple disciplines come together, and work on a project for the benefit of the community. Portland State through the years has partnered with many different groups for these Capstone courses. The topics are as diverse as the students that make up the individual courses, ranging from Social Justice and Immigration, to the environment, education, and in our case, food insecurity amongst senior citizens. Our course, the Multimedia Production Capstone, has the added challenge of not only letting ‘...Knowledge Serve the City’, but having it serve the world as our course in online based. Though most of the students in the class are attending Portland State locally, a few are international online students, students studying in other parts of the country, or students who travel for their work. It is because of this, it is important to not only have a topic that is important to the city of Portland, but also to cover a topic that is global in scale. Though our website will be focused on the Meals on Wheel’s People program in Portland, Oregon, we hope that information on our site will address the issue of food insecurity, so that others not in Portland may be inclined to see what they can do in their communities.

Food insecurity in senior populations is certainly a global issue. According to the National Council on Aging, in 2014 nearly 16% of adults in the US over the age of 60 were at risk of going hungry. That is over 10 million individuals. With the United States being the 2nd most food secure nation behind Ireland, according to the Global Food Security Index, you can imagine how devastating this issue is in other parts of the world.

Our very small contribution, to this very large problem is to get the word out about the problem of food insecurity, and how Meals On Wheels People helps Senior Citizens in Portland issue, on this topic. With students bringing insight from disciplines as diverse as: psychology, business administration, graphic design, Sociology, Economics and Film, (to name a few), we hope to build a strong foundation for future classes to build upon. We will also be developing training videos for Meals On Wheels’ volunteers, helping them be as prepared and efficient as possible, in helping these seniors in need.

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