Seeding Sparks Fellowship

Dr. Nikki Byrne-Hoffman grew up on a small acreage homestead in Braxton County, West Virginia. As a first generation college student, she graduated from West Virginia University with her B.A. in Biochemistry and went on to pursue a Doctorate of Philosophy in Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences where she studied drug abuse, diabetes, and immune system dysfunction in various cancers. In 2018, she and Reverend Zachary Morton began the First Presbyterian Church Food Donation Garden, an urban agriculture food sovereignty project in Downtown Morgantown. In 2020, she began a similar food sovereignty project with Rev. Morton and her Department of Biology colleague Dr. Katrina Stewart on the WVU Campus. She also now leads the agricultural and food system development of the veteran support nonprofit, Operation Welcome Home, as the Director of Agricultural Programs and leader of the WVU Extension and community-partnered Veterans Agricultural Training (VAT) program. 

Dr. Shanequa Smith is a community organizer and restorative justice practitioner working from West Charleston to create healing and learning opportunities for marginalized people through relational listening practices. She has a PhD in Human and Community Development from WVU and a Master’s in Counseling from Marshall. Along with recent voter empowerment initiatives, her work is centered on developing the Resiliency Railroad, which is a systematic, strategic, and collaborative initiative designed to instill resiliency factors for marginalized youth and families. This initiative, is seeded in restorative justice circles for parents, early literacy programs for children and youth, mindfulness and moral leadership training for middle schoolers and mentorship opportunities for high schoolers. Grounded in restorative and racial justice pedagogies, this initiative aims to create space for marginalized people to heal, learn, and connect to opportunities that will produce self-efficiency and stronger communities. 

Candace Harless holds a Bachelor's degree in Social Work and brings extensive expertise in substance use prevention, suicide prevention, and supporting at-risk youth. With a focus on both individual and environmental strategies, she is dedicated to fostering positive change in her community. Candace is also skilled in building and maintaining coalitions, leveraging collaborative efforts to enhance the effectiveness of prevention initiatives.

Duncan Waitts is currently employed at the Public Defender's office as a recovery specialist. Diversity and inclusion has become a passion, as I advocate for the betterment of people. He is a member of the NAACP as well as a Martin Luther King award winner. As a person with lived experience, he intends to make an impact in his community by reintegrating individuals who have been justice impacted into society, by helping provide coaching and training to defy the odds of their environment. 

I am Kimberly Wilson I am from the and represent the southern part of our district and reside in cabell county. I am the founder of Lyvs Place a non profit that helps troubled youth. Voices of hunger is important and hits home to be because we all should have the right to food. Being a parent and having to have had to struggle with food insecurities myself I know it’s not a good ffeeling when u can’t feed your children or yourself. Food is a human right and should be accessible  to all no matter of race disability or class. When I saw that was the mission  at voices of hunger was on board to make this law I have been on board since.

Gamma Mu Chapter of the Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society is the honorary society for graduate students in public health. The Society was founded in 1924 at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. There are more than 100 chapters and 20,000 members throughout the world. Membership in Delta Omega reflects the dedication of an individual to increasing the quality of the field, as well as to the protection and advancement of the health of all people. 

Since Delta Omega's establishment in 1924, the meaning and scope of public health has broadened tremendously. While it is still seriously concerned with problems of environmental sanitation and communicable disease control, public health action has come to embrace all aspects of health and disease in populations. These include the planning, organization, and support of health promotion, disease prevention, and medical care. Basic to modern public health are the social sciences as well as the natural sciences--both in the United States and internationally.