Working a shift...

 

You got a job, Jim?  No, but thanks for asking.  My buddy Mark volunteers regularly at the St Mary's Food Bank.  This is a large organization, distributing food 5 days a week.  We were told that "over 23,000 families received turkeys and the makings for Thanksgiving meals in the past 3 days."

Mark had asked if Joan, Steph, Dan, and I would be interesting in volunteering on the day before Thanksgiving.  We were all 4 in and Mark had arranged for a group of family and friends to be working together at two food distribution tables.

The way it worked: after going through registration, vehicles would come down our line 6 at a time.  They had a number marked on their windshield for how many families they were picking up for.  Some loaded food onto a table, others put that food in the vehicle.  There was a frozen turkey, a box of canned or boxed goods, a back of fresh vegetables, and two bread items (a loaf of bread, a package of bagels, dinner rolls, etc).  If there were kids in a vehicle, there were packages of snacks for them.  I didn't keep track of how many cars ran through our line.

From what I could tell, today was set up to be for groups of volunteers: some corporate, some family/friends.  Because there isn't a lot of parking on the St Mary's Food Bank grounds, we parked at the Arizona State Fairgrounds and were bussed to the Food Bank.  Everyone was given a hi-viz vest and instructions for their group.  Joan and Dan were putting bread items in the fresh food bags and getting out the turkeys, Steph was stocking tables, I was putting boxes, bags, and turkeys into vehicles.  I think we had 7 or 8 people working our table.  Mark and Cindy were with others at the table next to ours.  We loaded the first car in line, they did the same with the second; and more of the same for the rest of each batch of vehicles.  There were people directing traffic and lead volunteers over-seeing.  Most of the vehicles were picking up for one or two families, but we did have some that were picking up for more

Once the vehicles were loaded, we had a moment to get some photos within our group, before the next group of vehicles were directed in...

St Mary's Food Bank is good at getting all this food distributed.  The number of semi-trucks, forkifts, and many, many pallets of food is staggering.  And from what I saw today, it operates very efficiently.  I heard there were 220 volunteers today.