Teen Advisory Group in Action: TAG Projects 2019

Each year, members of FARE’s Teen Advisory Group (TAG) across the country conduct service projects to help make living with food allergies simpler, safer and more inclusive in their communities. These are among their many accomplishments from 2019. Some of these projects represent hope for a time when Major League Baseball, vacation cruises and even classroom outreach are once again possible. Other projects featured here, such as online engagement campaigns and allergy-friendly food bank drives, reflect our current moment in food allergy advocacy. Congratulations to our tweens, teens and young adults for their hard work and achievements.

Cruise Line Research
Project Lead: Charlotte Pearce
Team: Zach Brener, Zach Conroy, Jack Lumpinski
The focus of this research project was to evaluate the food allergy accommodations provided on various cruise lines. The group evaluated a long list of questions. Some cruise lines had information available on the company website. For others, we were able to ask questions on the phone. And some had very little information on the website or phone about food allergies. Therefore, very different levels of information are presented for each cruise line.

Food Allergy Awareness Video
Ava Geissel 
Throughout the year I worked with my brother on creating his Eagle Scout project. We created a food allergy awareness video that our school district agreed to implement in the high school health class curriculum starting next year. To produce the video we used information from the numerous sources on the FARE website and reached out to other organizations like Red Sneakers for Oakley. The video emphasizes the severity of food allergies, why re-reading food labels every time is important and other information that is necessary for everyone to understand to keep people with food allergies safe. I have also reached out to elementary schools and middle schools in our community to share the video with them and hopefully get them on board with more food allergy safety in the future. 

Local Elementary School Education
Project Leads: Andrew Nazareth, Michelle Nazareth
Team: Teresa Hooker, Jack Kapcar, Sophie Malik, Lexie Malik and Jaycee Rogers
Andrew and Michelle started a campaign encouraging other TAG members to read a food allergy-friendly book to younger kids. They suggested “Can I Have Some Cake Too?” by Melanie Nazareth. The purpose of the campaign was not only to encourage TAG members to reach out to younger kids with food allergies, but also give them courage and hope that they are not alone in this journey. The essence of the book is to remind young kids that they have the support not only of their families and teachers but their friends also care deeply for them and will look out for them to protect them from accidentally ingesting foods with their allergens. Most members of the team who signed up for the campaign already had a copy of the book; Andrew and Michelle shipped a copy to one member. The team members read the book to kids at their local libraries and elementary schools.

Be a PAL 
Rylee Christian 
My project for 2019 was going to elementary schools in my town and presenting the Be a PAL: Protect A Life™ From Food Allergies educational program. At the start of the school year I emailed the school nurse proposing my idea and explaining how close this was to my heart. I chose to do this because I know if I saw an older teenager talking about how food allergies are serious but still don’t make someone different, it would have made me not feel as embarrassed. The nurse loved this idea, especially because her son has food allergies. I then met with the school nurse explaining everything and suggested a couple of teachers I would like to start with. She then talked to the teachers and we set up a date during school hours for the presentation. The day rolled around for my presentation and I was very excited and anxious. It went very smoothly and I made sure to get the message across clearly on how to be a good friend and how food allergies are super normal. The kids asked very good questions and seemed to enjoy the presentation. My next goal is to go to more teachers’ classrooms and expand to more schools. 

Social Media Awareness
Project Lead: Elise Buellesbach
Team: Lauren Cohen, Rebecca Fallick, Suraj Kalaria, Magdalene Kausler, Campbell Shaw, Ben Stack and Megan Tutundgian
This year we worked to brainstorm ideas to create a more engaging social media platform for FARE. We worked with VALO, FARE’s former social consulting group, to get our ideas heard. One of the ideas that we came up with during our brainstorm was to create a video booth at the Contains Courage: FARE Summit to produce more footage to use on social media. Although we were not a part of the execution of the project, we have now seen two videos that were filmed at the Summit on FARE’s YouTube channel: The Hope of New Treatments and Why We Need the FASTER Act

The Importance of Epinephrine
Project Lead: Ramsey Makan
Team: Fahran Bajaj, Scout Brodsky, Nicholas Cannistraci, Lauren Cohen, Matthew Doucette, Isabel Dowling, Jack Kapcar, Clare Kirchner, Serina Menon, Sarah Mufson, Justin Rothenberg, Andrea Schmidt, Scout Sylves-Berry, Annie Walsh and Molly Ward
The Importance of Epinephrine is a TAG Project with the goal of educating teenagers on the life-saving and beneficial qualities of epinephrine. Many teenagers get seriously injured or even die due to being afraid to use epinephrine, and the goal of the project is to educate them to lower that risk. To achieve this goal, TAG members created many infographics and videos about epinephrine, such as a week of fast facts about epinephrine, an EpiPen vs. Auvi-Q comparison, and two "epinephrine stories" about how epinephrine has saved someone's life (many more to come). We posted them on our very own Instagram account (@importance_of_epinephrine) with the purpose of directly targeting teenagers. By the end of 2019, we accumulated 87 followers, and we plan to continue this project for years to come by expanding to other social platforms, adding more content, and giving talks.

Teen Taste Test Panel
Project Lead: Lauren Rivera
Team: Fahran Bajaj, Zach Brener, Caitlyn Carter, Jean Fermi, Teresa Hooker, Angela Li, Josephine Schizer, Kari Smelter and Ava Wellener
Today’s teenagers are busy and often away from home because of sports, school, part-time jobs, volunteer work and time with friends. We need portable snacks that we can easily grab as fuel. Snack options are endless in supermarket aisles, but for teens with food allergies, grabbing a snack is not always a simple choice and can even be life-threatening. Labels can be misleading, and safe options are not plentiful. To help address this issue, some TAG members did a snack bar teen taste panel. 

Allergy-Friendly Food Drives
Project Leads: Anisah Daniel, Celeste Virador
Team: Caitlin Furey, Magdalene Grace, Julia Gray, Allyson Go, Sara Hantgan, Cassie Jeng, Ally Kalishman, Magdalene Kausler, Ryken Mak, Sophie Meade, Serina Menon, Connor Mitchell, Morgan Romo, Josh Rubel and Sophie Schmults
TAG members worked to address a pressing need of the food allergy community. Unfortunately, many are affected by poverty or an inability to access food, and this crisis is exacerbated by food restrictions such as allergies. Therefore, we defined our mission to address this crisis: “To create allergy-friendly food drives that benefit low-income members of the food allergy community by providing increased access and quantity of viable food options”. Due to the varying locations of the TAG members, we were able to hold allergy-friendly food drives in different areas of the country. Our group had meetings on how we would execute this project, created a presentation to present to food banks, and created an email outline for members to refer to when contacting food banks. Using these resources and collaborating with TAG members, we were able to execute this project in our local communities and benefit the food allergy community. 

Art for Abhi
Arjin Claire
After attending the 2019 Contains: Courage FARE Summit near Washington, D.C., Arjin convinced his aunt and uncle, who run an annual arts and crafts charity event (Art for Abhi) to donate all proceeds to FARE. Arjin spoke at the event to help people understand the severity of food allergies and shared some personal stories. He also presented on FARE and the work that is being done and needs to be done. Proceeds for this event are still coming in, and close to $8,000 has been raised thus far. 

Be Brave, Be Thoughtful and Be Kind
Project Lead: Kelly Tung
Team: Lizzy Anderlik, Scout Brodsky, Zachary Brunet, Nicholas Cannistraci, Lauren Cohen, Kelly Kang, Clare Kirchner, Michael Lan, Hannah Park, Josephine Schizer, Autumn Schless, Campbell Shaw and Tony Valade
The goal of the Be Brave, Be Thoughtful, and Be Kind project is to create videos to raise awareness of food allergies. We believe that it is crucial for people to be aware of and understand the challenges of having food allergies for them to be able to support those with allergies. Furthermore, our videos are also targeted to motivate and encourage those with food allergies as well. Our first video, Be Brave, is about how managing our allergies helps our lives; we hope our stories and our experiences encourage others to be brave and confident with their allergies. Our second video, Be Thoughtful and Be Kind, educates others about how to be thoughtful and considerate towards people with food allergies. We truly want to make a change in the allergy community and help out those with allergies as much as we can.

Take Me Out to the Ballpark
Project Lead: Lauren Rivera
Team: Matthew Ciampa, Rebecca Fallick, Caroline French, Jaxon Groenhoff, Ethan Hirsch, Colin Lapus, Charlotte Pearce, Andrea Schmidt, Connor Wallis
Baseball is a traditional American pastime enjoyed by many. There’s nothing better than spending a warm summer afternoon at the ballpark, drinking lemonade, eating garlic fries and cheering on the team. For fans with food allergies, however, a trip to the ballpark can be a stressful and even life-threatening outing. TAG created this guide to help identify Major League Baseball ballparks that offer food allergy-friendly programs, so that fans with food allergies can safely enjoy a baseball game.