In My Own Backyard
Every year, one of my girlfriends and I exchange ideas for our yearly goals. When I told her that one of my goals was to 'give back', she asked me how I planned to do that. Then she invited me to join her in volunteering at The Gleaners. I asked what that entailed, and her description was so inviting, I had to say yes.
They start at 8:30 every morning, and work until noon. Most of their volunteers are seniors who, by the sounds of it, have been involved for a number of years. They take donations of food from the community that might not be 'retail friendly' or overstocked and make it into dried soup mix and send it to people around the world that need it.
My #1 son decided he would come with me. He was a seasoned volunteer - having spent time there during his high school career with various missions classes and leadership classes. I was proud to walk in with him, as various people greeted him by name and asked him what he was up to now.
My friend had already arrived when we got there. So were about 50 others. It was 'onion' day and we set to cutting up the onions - over 5000 had been delivered early that day. We visited in between wiping tears away from the onion fumes.
Halfway into the morning, someone stopped us for introductions and prayer. There was a group from Manitoba, and one of the volunteers who had been there for a little while, was given a fond farewell, as he was about to get on his motorbike and head down south. After that, some of us graduated to 'soup detail'. This involved an assembly line of people who filled buckets with all the soup mixings, and then passed them to the people who dumped the buckets into the bags, who then passed them to the bag sealer, who then passed it to the guys who stacked the bags into the boxes. Each bag serves 100 people. By the time the morning was over, we were told that we had done 7 pallets of boxes, which would serve 280 000 people. And as my son said, that would have been 280 000 meals that would have been thrown out, had we not done the work.
What was even more amazing was realizing that this work has gone on for many years, in the community in which I live, and although I had heard of it, I never had experienced it first hand.
If you want to check it out, here's their website. http://www.fvgleaners.org/home.html
And here's some stats I took off that site. [p.s The man you will see on the home page was 'our bag sealer' guy. ]
Servings processed and made ready for shipping 2010: 10.5 million
* Servings produced per volunteer per hour: 140
* Cost/serving to produce: $ 0.05
* Tonnes of produce processed in 2010: 852.7 tonnes
* Total volunteer hours in 2010: 49,000 hrs.
* Average number of volunteers per day: 50
* Average dryer load times: 8-9 hours
* Number of recipient countries in 2010: 18
I went to give back, but I ended up having such an inspirational morning, by the giving spirit of the people with whom I came in contact today.
They start at 8:30 every morning, and work until noon. Most of their volunteers are seniors who, by the sounds of it, have been involved for a number of years. They take donations of food from the community that might not be 'retail friendly' or overstocked and make it into dried soup mix and send it to people around the world that need it.
My #1 son decided he would come with me. He was a seasoned volunteer - having spent time there during his high school career with various missions classes and leadership classes. I was proud to walk in with him, as various people greeted him by name and asked him what he was up to now.
My friend had already arrived when we got there. So were about 50 others. It was 'onion' day and we set to cutting up the onions - over 5000 had been delivered early that day. We visited in between wiping tears away from the onion fumes.
Halfway into the morning, someone stopped us for introductions and prayer. There was a group from Manitoba, and one of the volunteers who had been there for a little while, was given a fond farewell, as he was about to get on his motorbike and head down south. After that, some of us graduated to 'soup detail'. This involved an assembly line of people who filled buckets with all the soup mixings, and then passed them to the people who dumped the buckets into the bags, who then passed them to the bag sealer, who then passed it to the guys who stacked the bags into the boxes. Each bag serves 100 people. By the time the morning was over, we were told that we had done 7 pallets of boxes, which would serve 280 000 people. And as my son said, that would have been 280 000 meals that would have been thrown out, had we not done the work.
What was even more amazing was realizing that this work has gone on for many years, in the community in which I live, and although I had heard of it, I never had experienced it first hand.
If you want to check it out, here's their website. http://www.fvgleaners.org/home.html
And here's some stats I took off that site. [p.s The man you will see on the home page was 'our bag sealer' guy. ]
Servings processed and made ready for shipping 2010: 10.5 million
* Servings produced per volunteer per hour: 140
* Cost/serving to produce: $ 0.05
* Tonnes of produce processed in 2010: 852.7 tonnes
* Total volunteer hours in 2010: 49,000 hrs.
* Average number of volunteers per day: 50
* Average dryer load times: 8-9 hours
* Number of recipient countries in 2010: 18
I went to give back, but I ended up having such an inspirational morning, by the giving spirit of the people with whom I came in contact today.
Comments
Hmmmm
thanks for the writeup, and your reflections. All helpful...