FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Knights Helping Knights Pantry Pinterest Orlando, Florida—Staying true to their mission of “serving the UCF students by providing basic needs including food, clothing, and personal hygiene items to foster continued academic success,” the Knight’s Helping Knights Pantry has recently set up a Pinterest account, providing an abundance of recipes featuring their most donated items. The KHK Pantry Pinterest originated from an Honors class project focusing on the use of collective intelligence. Taught by Dr. Stacey Pigg, Writing in Digital Environments is an upper-division English course that serves as an interdisciplinary study for The Burnett Honors College students. The class learns theory behind common online phenomena, such as information ecologies, distributed authorships, and crowdsourcing, and then completes real-world, practical projects to see how this theory can positively affect their community. For the students’ final project, they are required to find a need and respond to it through a technological platform that relies on collective intelligence—many minds benefiting a common goal. Andrea Young, a student in Dr. Pigg’s class, volunteers at the KHK Pantry a couple of times a week. She said, “I noticed that a lot of the same items were being donated to the KHK Pantry and that students that come in repeatedly during the week don’t take the same thing because they already have it from a previous day.” This need prompted her to propose the idea for a KHK Pantry Pinterest to her Writing in Digital Environments class. Young and her project members believe that “if KHK Pantry users are provided with recipes to spice up what they take, they won’t have a problem taking the same food item more than once.” The KHK Pantry Manager, Bella Craig, gave permission to Young and her group members to start the project, convinced it will further the KHK Pantry Mission. She comments, “I see the potential for this project to not only encourage people to support the KHK Pantry, but also to serve the clients of the KHK Pantry as a tool to find recipes and better utilize the goods the KHK Pantry provides.” While the main efforts of the KHK Pantry are focused on gathering donations, Craig sees technology aiding in these endeavors in the long run. She said, “technology has provided the KHK Pantry with an outlet to allow our community to get a look into what the KHK Pantry is up to and how they can get involved.” The KHK Pantry can be found on multiple social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and now Pinterest. Staying up to date with their needs has never been easier. Craig urges users, donators, volunteers, and anyone interested to check out the work Young and her project members have been doing on the KHK Pantry Pinterest site. Because their project relies on collective intelligence, the more participation from other Pinterest users, the better. Young
hopes connecting to the community in this way will help grow the KHK Pantry into a service completely attuned the UCF nation. To learn more, contact: Lauren Holiday Public Relations Manager, KHK Pantry Pinterest laurenly@knights.ucf.edu (850) 322-5116 ###