Our people
The roles
Every chapter runs on six named roles. Each one is held by a student, each one owns a defined part of the work, and every holder names a deputy by 31 March.
The six named
roles
The six named
roles
A chapter is a club of its own school, run by its students under a Teacher Advisor. Six roles carry the work: Chapter Lead, Deputy Lead, Outreach Editor, List Builder, Follow-up Clerk and Records and Hours Clerk. A new chapter starts with three: Chapter Lead, Deputy Lead and Outreach Editor. Every role is named, every role is held by a student, and everyone knows who holds what.
Holding a role is a standing job. Members are unpaid and this is not a one-off shift: a chapter meets every week through the school year, at lunch, and the person who holds a role is the person the rest of the chapter relies on to have done the work. Every role names a deputy by 31 March. The deputy runs at least two sessions in April and every session in May, and the handover pack is completed in June. The roles exist because the work has real parts to it. Farms have to be found before they can be contacted. An email has to be drafted and checked before it can be sent. A reply has to be answered before it goes cold. A yes has to be handed to an organization that collects. Every one of those steps belongs to somebody by name.
The six named
roles
Chapter Lead
Runs it
Chapter Lead
Runs it
The Chapter Lead runs the session, holds the timer, and works with the Teacher Advisor and the Chapter Liaison. They are accountable for the chapter as a whole, and every other role reports to them.
A Chapter Lead is not the person who does everything. They are the person who makes sure everything is done. They book the room, open the session, keep the chapter to its weekly rhythm through the school year, and own the chapter’s relationship with its Teacher Advisor and with HQ’s Chapter Liaison. It is the role with the most responsibility and the one people grow into fastest.
Chapter Lead
Runs it
Deputy Lead
Successor
Deputy Lead
Successor
The Deputy Lead holds every credential the Chapter Lead holds, from the first day, and runs the session whenever the Chapter Lead is away.
The role exists so that a chapter never depends on one person. The Deputy Lead is named at the start, not found in a hurry at the end of the year, and becomes Chapter Lead at handover. Continuity is a role here, not a hope.
Deputy Lead
Successor
Outreach Editor
Outreach Editor
Pairs draft each email from the template, and the Outreach Editor reads every one before it is sent. No email leaves unreviewed, including the Chapter Lead’s. The Outreach Editor also signs off every farm record.
Farms are busy businesses and the writing respects that. The email does not change. It asks one question: Do you have surplus or grade-out produce this season that you cannot sell? It carries the school’s street address and the STOP line, and nothing else. The Outreach Editor keeps that email intact, keeps the tone direct and businesslike, and checks that the Teacher Advisor is copied on every message. Consistency is an editorial job, and this is the role that holds it.
Outreach Editor
List Builder
List Builder
The List Builder finds the farms. HQ assigns each chapter its area, and the List Builder builds and checks the farm list for it from published sources.
Building the list is the foundation of everything else. Canada has 189,874 farms (Statistics Canada, Census of Agriculture 2021). No chapter writes to all of them, so the List Builder works within the area HQ assigns: commercial farm businesses only, each with its published business email or phone, the source it came from and the date it was checked. We never ask about produce from backyard, home or community gardens, and we never record a personal address, a personal mobile number or anything from a personal social profile. A list that is not maintained is a list that quietly goes wrong, so maintaining it is somebody’s named job.
List Builder
Follow-up Clerk
Follow-up Clerk
The Follow-up Clerk sends the single follow-up on day 14 and closes the record.
One follow-up, about two weeks later, catches emails that were missed in a busy week. That is why it is a role of its own rather than a task somebody remembers. The Follow-up Clerk knows which farms have been written to and when, sends the one follow-up on time, and then stops: no farm is written to a third time. When a farm says yes, the chapter gives it the published contact of an organization that collects, and the Follow-up Clerk closes each record once the receiving organization confirms whether it collected. The work is patient and careful.
Follow-up Clerk
The Records and Hours Clerk
The Records and Hours Clerk
The Records and Hours Clerk keeps the farm record and the attendance and hours log, and enforces the never-collect rule. A chapter that writes it down knows exactly what it did, when, and what came of it.
Records are what turn a year of work into something the next year can build on. Every farm the chapter contacts is recorded, with the first contact date, the follow-up date and the outcome. Attendance and hours are logged every session, so the school can decide what counts. The Records and Hours Clerk keeps that file current through the school year and hands it over intact when roles change. The same student enforces the never-collect rule: food never passes through a member’s hands, no one travels to a farm, and no one holds money. The record is also what makes an honest monthly report to HQ possible.
The Records and Hours Clerk
Unpaid members
Unpaid members
Every member of The Neighbour’s Table is a student and every member is unpaid. Holding a role is a standing job across a school year, not a shift somebody signs up for once.
That distinction matters. A chapter meets every week through the school year, and the roles are held by the same people from one week to the next, so every farm on the record is handled by somebody who knows its history. Some schools count the time toward volunteer hours. The school decides, never The Neighbour’s Table. Members do it because the gap is hard to defend: 8.8 million tonnes of edible food is wasted in Canada every year (Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International, 2024), while 24.0% of people in Canada lived in a food-insecure household in 2025, about 9.8 million people (PROOF, University of Toronto, 2026). Holding a role is how a student does something about that.
Unpaid members
Weekly session
Every school week
Weekly session
Every school week
The chapter meets once a week, at lunch, every week of the school year.
The weekly session is the spine of the whole operation. It runs for 45 minutes in a room at the school, in pairs, with a timer and a visible count. It is where the farm list gets checked, where emails are drafted and sent, where replies are answered and where the records are brought up to date. The work is never homework and never done alone. Roles mean something because the session happens: the List Builder arrives with farms, the Outreach Editor reads every draft, the Follow-up Clerk arrives with the follow-ups that are due, and the Records and Hours Clerk leaves with all of it written down. A chapter that meets is a chapter that works.
Weekly session
Every school week
The record
Every farm logged
The record
Every farm logged
Every farm we contact is on the record: its name, its published business contact, the source, the dates and the outcome. HQ keeps a shared do-not-contact list across all chapters and assigns each chapter its own area, which is how a farm is never written to by two chapters.
Records are how a student-run organization stays an organization. Chapters change hands every year and the file does not. It is also how we hold ourselves to something: every figure we publish about our own work will come out of the record.
The record
Every farm logged
Handing over
Handing over
Every role names its deputy by 31 March, and the deputy holds every credential from the first day rather than on the day of the handover. The deputy runs at least two sessions in April and every session in May, and the handover pack is completed in June. By then the handover has already happened in practice.
Student organizations fail at the handover far more often than they fail at the work. A role that lives in one person’s head ends when that person leaves, and the next year starts from nothing. The Neighbour’s Table is built the other way round. Roles are named, deputies are named, and the records belong to the organization rather than to any individual. The List Builder’s list, the Outreach Editor’s template, the Follow-up Clerk’s queue and the Records and Hours Clerk’s file all pass intact from one year to the next. That is how a chapter keeps running instead of starting over every September. Continuity is designed in.
Handing over
Taking one
Taking one
Roles are open at the start of every school year, and in any chapter that is short of one.
If your school has a chapter, ask the Chapter Lead which role is open and say what you want to hold. If your school does not have one, you can start it. To start one, students first get the principal’s written approval and a Teacher Advisor, then apply to HQ. Students run the session, students decide who holds what, and the work is real from the first week.
Taking one
