Hunger 101 Curriculum from the Atlanta Community Food Bank

As a former civil and criminal litigator in the state of Michigan who graduated from the University of Michigan Law school in the top ten percent of his class, once Frederick Toca Jr. moved from Detroit Michigan to in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2006 he transfered much of the passion that he had exhibited in the coutrooms of Michigan to giving back to his local Atlanta community, Since he moved to Georgia, Frederick Toca Jr has started a community garden to feed the hungry in South West Atlanta, started a feeding program that visited and feed homeless men in Atlanta's Bankhead area, opened a food pantry at his Church and initiated a feeding program at 7 Bridges in Smyrna. Currently Frederick Toca, Jr.. supports organizations such as Covenant House and the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank recognizes that more than 20 percent of Georgia children live in a food-insecure household. In addition to providing food assistance through more than 600 community organizations, the Greater Atlanta Food Bank operates education and outreach programs focused on the relationship between poverty and hunger.

The Hunger 101 curriculum, developed in collaboration with Emory University's School of Public Health in the early 1990s, continues to educate corporate entities and public schools about hunger as a public health issue. Additionally, the curriculum has since been adopted by many other food banks in the Feeding America food bank system.

HIIT Workouts Are Effective and Time-Efficient

Frederick Toca Jr. is a motivated leader with strong communication and managerial skills. Most recently, he served as director of contract administration in Atlanta. In his free time, Frederick Toca Jr. enjoys running and doing high-intensity interval training workouts.

One of the biggest reasons people don’t exercise is because they don’t think they have the time to commit to a rigorous workout regimen. However, there is a solution: high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a workout that involves short periods of intense exercise alternated with recovery periods. As most HIIT workouts range from 3 to 10 minutes, they help people get maximal health benefits in a smaller amount of time.

In addition to being time-efficient, HIIT workouts actually burn a lot of calories. Researchers found that HIIT workouts burn 25 to 30 percent more calories than other forms of exercise. Researchers also showed that HIIT workouts elevate the metabolism and keep it up for several hours after the workout, resulting in more calories burned. Another study showed that 2 minutes of sprints following the HIIT model increased metabolism as much as 30 minutes of running. Yet another study found that people who did HIIT three times a week lost 4.4 pounds over the course of 12 weeks without making any other changes. These are just some of the many reasons to incorporate HIIT workouts into your weekly routine.

Major Trends Shaping the Procurement Industry

A former Senior Policy Advisor to the City of Atlanta's $15 Million Dollar parking program, Frederick Toca Jr. served the City in various functions since 2015. As a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Toca used his 15 years as a litigator and his 8 years working with corporate contracts to reform the way that the City of Atlanta's Department of Public Works organized and processed contracts. In fact, Mr. Toca developed and implemented a Contract Management System for the entire Department of Public Works in 2017. The nature of procurement in recent years has been changing in an intensely global environment. One of the main drivers of that change is increasingly unstable geopolitical forces.Trade tariffs  and major political restructuring around the world are making it difficult to keep channels open and clear through a procurement process.

In part for that reason, the trend to build better relationships with suppliers is growing as well. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s seen as more of a priority now than ever before, as distrust on a global scale is growing.

Moreover, while procurement specialists are always looking to reduce spending, they’re increasingly willing to trade some savings for better value. Costs can be distributed in many ways, and cost avoidance or containment can be just as attractive to a procurement manager as direct savings. Mr. Toca's Contract Management Program took into account the globalization of Procurement and the changing nature of Municipal Contracting on a scale beyond the borders of Georgia.

In 2019, Fredrick Toca took his 5 years of experiences at the City of Atlanta and brought them to the private sector. Mr. Toca is currently working as a Senior Commercial Contract Manager for a global financial technology company.