Second Harvest Food Bank Volunteer Session

Since the holidays are fast approaching, it leads me to thinking about those in need and about the volunteer session I participated in last November. I’ve donated to Second Harvest Food Bank before but am quite uneducated on what happens to the food once they have been donated. So when the opportunity to volunteer at the Food Bank presented itself, I grabbed it.

Rich Amooi of Hey Mr DJ was the organizer of this volunteer session and is the team leader of our volunteer group, which comprised of wedding professionals. After we signed in and listened to a brief introduction, we were led to this room where there were large barrels of unsorted donated food items and tables with some food items on them and empty cardboard boxes.

Mike from the Second Harvest Food Bank then proceeded to explain to us how to sort and categorize the food items. For example, canned food between 9 to 19 ounces will be further sorted into Fruit, Vegetables and Meals In A Can categories while any canned food that is not round or under 9 or over 19 ounces will go into the Miscellaneous category. The sorters will sort the food items and bring them over to the appropriate “stations” at the tables so that they can be boxed up. It’s a lot of information to take in but once you start sorting, it gets easier.

Some of us were responsible for sorting while some of us were responsible for boxing up the sorted items. I opted to do the sorting as I thought that would be more interesting. It was quite fun as we, the sorters, ran around with our food items to the various categories’ stations. Come to think of it, I don’t know why we were running, you’ll think we were in some kind of competition! I guess it was a good thing that we did, as at the end of 2 hours, we managed to sort through and boxed up food items from 27 of those barrels! Yay!

So what has this experience taught me? It’s always nice to donate your time and energy for a good cause. Everyone is so busy nowadays with stuff happening in their own lives that sometimes, it’s hard to find time to volunteer. However, giving back to the community should be a priority so that we give back to those who need it more than us. Happy Holidays!