THE WOMEN'S ISSUE
events: Once people found out, the whole community of Pittsboro jumped in.” That’s been true beyond the volunteers. Camelback Brewing Company in Sanford also signed on in early March to make its kitchen available, with more distribution points to follow. Chatham is the state’s geographical center and is home to 68,778 residents, 7,480 of whom are food insecure, according to data reported by the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina in 2019. That’s roughly one in nine people. “What we’re doing is nothing new,” Danielle says. “We’re just jumping in on something that needs to happen. We’re trying to change the culture of food and eating back to something that’s more inclusive. “Farm-to-table has been such a buzzword for the past 10 years,” she adds. “It’s something that you pay extra money for when you go to eat places; it used to just be farm-to-table was how people ate. And as an organization, we’d like to see a shift in culture back to where it’s not just a good buzz phrase on a menu. [Instead], it’s an inclusive, communal effort.” – by Hannah Lee Robin Hood’s Kitchen currently accepts donations for shelf-stable goods including olive oil, rice, pasta (not spaghetti), canned tomatoes and beans, and spices at Angelina’s Kitchen. If you would like to provide other items or volunteer for a shift, email robinhoodskitchen@ gmail.com. To donate, visit venmo.com/u/robinhoodskitchen. 30
CHATHAM MAGAZINE
APRIL / MAY 2021
JAYDEN SANSOM
DUAL-ENROLLED HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR AT CHATHAM SCHOOL OF SCIENCE & ENGINEERING AND CENTRAL CAROLINA COMMUNITY COLLEGE Jayden was born in Great Falls, Montana, and moved to Chatham in 2012 from Bristol, Virginia. She lives with her parents, Brian Sansom and Jaime Sansom, in Pittsboro near Chapel Ridge. Her sister, Jaycee Sansom, studies computer science at UNC-Chapel Hill, which Jayden will also study at N.C. State beginning this fall.
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rushes to the library between classes at Central Carolina Community College (CCCC) just to feel the keyboard at her fingertips. The young coder clicks and clacks as numbers and letters form scripts, sets and sometimes even a program – though it may take days of work. Or months. Jayden loves getting lost in the “puzzle” of the virtual world. She didn’t start coding until her freshman year of high school, yet Jayden has already won more than 15 awards and honors in the discipline. That includes her latest (and most prestigious) honor: the 2021 award for Aspirations in Computing, which she won from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) – selected from a field of nearly 4,300 candidates – in January. “To [be] chosen as one of the top 40 women was utter and complete joy and disbelief,” Jayden says. “I worked very hard to get to that moment.” Jayden was also previously recognized by the NCWIT as a 2019 Rising Star. In the time between those two honors, she developed an award-winning app, Starga, which tracks constellations, and created ayden Sansom