2025 Right to Food Learning and Action Fellow Spotlight: Carolina Rascon

By Daniel Chian, National Right to Food Community of Practice Summer Intern, Oberlin College

For our first entry in our Fellows profiles series, we are thrilled to introduce you to Carolina Rascon from West Virginia. Carolina currently serves as a project coordinator at Voices of Hunger West Virginia, an organization dedicated to advancing the right to food in the state. Based in Morgantown, one of Carolina’s first projects with Voices of Hunger was supporting the city’s landmark municipal resolution, which recognizes the right to food for its residents, the first of any American city to do so. 

Carolina is from West Virginia, hailing from the town of Keyser in the eastern panhandle. She first moved to Morgantown to attend West Virginia University (WVU), where she studied Women’s and Gender Studies for her bachelor’s degree. However, after personally experiencing food insecurity and inadequate nutrition as a student, Carolina made the decision to leave school and put a pause on her undergraduate education. Along with her interest in cultural exchange and passion for social justice, this experience would move her toward food systems work. 

After working for a few years, Carolina returned to WVU to complete her degree. Though her schooling moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine allowed her to continue taking classes while working a remote full-time job. Carolina became an undergraduate research assistant at WVU's Food Justice Lab, and this led her to join the Voices of Hunger coalition as a founding member, where she helped create the organization’s name. In addition to working on the Morgantown resolution, Carolina also helped introduce a statewide resolution for West Virginia. The Morgantown resolution, which passed unanimously in December of 2021, is a nonbinding municipal resolution which highlights the fact that food is a human right. Carolina, along with a student intern at the Miami Law Human Rights Clinic, conducted initial research and a first draft of the resolution, which was later introduced by City Council member Brian Butcher. A statewide resolution was also introduced twice in the years following the Morgantown resolution. However, this statewide effort has been put on pause as Carolina’s work in West Virginia has since shifted to focus on bringing awareness to services that may be affected by changes in policy, including SNAP and WIC. 

After working as an AmeriCorps VISTA member for two years - at the student pantry that she once relied on at WVU - Carolina has returned to Voices of Hunger to be the project coordinator. In this role, statewide organizing and community building within Morgantown have become her major areas of focus. Though recent federal cuts to social programs and a shift in political priorities have made systems change all the more difficult in West Virginia, greatly reducing the chances of passing new legislation in support of the right to food in her home state, Carolina is determined to defend the victories she and her team have already accomplished. 

From the start, Carolina's approach to food systems change has been through the lens of a human rights framework, and she believes the right to food has become the cornerstone of her work. Through the support of the Right to Food Learning and Action Fellowship Program, Carolina hopes to donate to the Morgantown chapter of Food Not Bombs, and put together an educational arts and culture event at a local venue to spread the word about the right to food. 

We hope you can join us in celebrating Carolina Rascon, one of our inaugural Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows!

Stay tuned for upcoming spotlight blog posts on our other four impressive Fellows. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolina-rascon/