I received the opportunity to do 20 hours of service for my social work class at Community Action Services and Food Bank. This was a wonderful chance where I got to experience what it was like to work at a Food Bank. By volunteering at Community Action I experienced and learned about the atmosphere of the food bank, saw and helped put together packages families receive from the food bank, and learned more about what it may be like to be a recipient of a food bank.
Community Acton Food Bank atmosphere is full of diverse people. Within my twenty hours of service I got to work with many different individuals. Lots of people who volunteer there are court ordered. Some days there would be groups of people who would show up in orange vests and do their community service. Other people were there because they got speeding tickets, or had got in trouble with the police. However I also worked with large groups of missionaries who would come every Thursday. I would also work with athletes, and students from BYU who were volunteering. Each day it was interesting to show up and see what groups of people would be there. Every day it was different, and everyone had their own story and reason for being there.
The atmosphere I experienced at Community Action was in a warehouse setting. Each day I went I would enter into the warehouse, sign in, and then do what I was instructed to do. Community Action Food Bank is split into two areas. There is a sitting area where I assume people can apply and do paper work to receive their food. The other half was the warehouse, where I was, where the actual food was stored and put together.
Community Action has different packages of food that families get depending on the size of the family. An example of this is for a family of one, the canned food they will receive will be three cans of 10 oz. soup, three cans of 15 oz. fruit, three cans of 15oz. beans, two cans of 15 oz. tomato, two 15oz. cans of vegetables, and two cans of 5 oz. of meat. They will also receive other food items, such as things that are perishable, depending on what the food bank has in stock.
Putting these packages together is what I did for most of the time. There are five different packages you can put together for cans. There is a senior, family of one, family of two, family of three, and family of four package. Each package was different. The bigger the family, the more cans they would receive. The process of putting this together would be to first sort the cans according to what they were; beans, fruit, soup, etc. They would be sorted into big wooden crates. After they are sorted the food boxes and bags would then be assembled. The assembling is what I did most of the time. At first it was confusing to figure out what can would work for the certain number of ounces required. Some cans would be really small, so you would have to put in two or three to count as one normal size can. However as time went on, I began to catch on. By the end I could look at a can and decipher what size it was, and how much it would count for.
Although at times the work seemed tedious, I was grateful I got to do it because it let me glimpse into the life of a food bank recipient. While putting cans into bags, I thought about what it would be like receiving a package. If you were really struggling with making ends meet, and having enough food for yourself and family that would be really hard. The extra help that agencies like Community Action provide would help immensely. I pictured what it would be like opening up the package of food and seeing what you would be able to eat that week. It was a very humbling experience.
Although I did not receive the chance to work or shadow a social worker in my volunteer hours, I felt that I learned just as much as I would of if I shadowed one. I could picture these individuals and although they were struggling with providing food, they must be strong and have a great deal of endurance. I learned so much about people, and even though individuals’ situations and lifestyles may be different, we are all humans and need the same things. Whether it is material things like food, and shelter, or intangible things it doesn’t matter. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to work and learn at Community Action Food Bank.
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