Last year I did something that made a big change in the life: I volunteered to donate my time at a community food bank. I'm semi-retired, on "early retirement" Social Security, while continuing to work part time for Cochise County, running their one person rural trash and recycling station for Sunsites AZ. Every Saturday volunteers from the Sunsites Bread Basket, a privately run community food bank, would bring out their pickup load of cardboard boxes for recycling. One warm day last August they asked if I knew anyone who could help them distribute food the next Monday as they were short handed. I considered it briefly and then said "Yeah - me. I can help out." The volunteers all seemed like such a nice bunch of folks, and I was curious what it would be like. I've been doing it every Monday since then. It's very rewarding - seeing the smile on a child's face, hearing the "thank you so very much" from a mother or father, helping a senior barely getting by on Social Security out to their car with much needed groceries. I've learned that the simple act of giving and helping others is one of the most satisfying things in life. Actually, someone before me said it much better:
Please follow me below for a discussion of what we do in our local food bank, and how our community food bank helps our community, and how our community helps us. We call it
Neighbors helping Neighbors.
That's our humble home of the Sunsites Breadbasket, an adobe block building. It started out in life as a bar and grill, housed several other businesses over the years, and then sat empty several years before we purchased it last year at a terrific price. Community businesses, residents, churches, and organizations, such as the VFW and Lion's Club, have all been very generous in supporting us. Sunsites is mainly a rural retirement community of around 3,000 people in the Sulphur Springs Valley of central Cochise County, the southeast corner of Arizona. 70% of residents are 40 years of age or older, only 16% are 18 or younger. Most folks are of modest means, living on Social Security, working in the area's main "industry", farming and ranching, or commuting to work in the nearby cities of Willcox or Benson. It has a wonderful small town feel to it, with friends and neighbors greeting each other at the one convenience store, hardware store, or grocery store. The valley is at 4200' elevation, so we enjoy mild winters and mild summers (for Arizona). Snowbirds from northern states and even Canada swell the population by at least 10% in the winter. I live a few miles out of town on a 10 acre property, this is what the valley looked like last winter when I was out walking my dogs:
We distribute food every Monday afternoon from 2-5PM, averaging around 80 folks and families each week; everyone is permitted to come twice per month. We get our food supplies from a number of sources - donations from local stores, community food drives in which residents are encouraged to drop off non-perishable canned or boxed food, and in lean times we purchase food from our cash donations. But our largest source for food is Walmart - every week our volunteers drive the 100+ mile round trip to the Sierra Vista and Douglas Walmarts to collect their donations. It's primarily food nearing it's expiration date, but is still perfectly good, healthy and nutritious. And it's a win-win all the way around. Instead of having to pay to dump food past its expiration date in a landfill, they get to write it off as a charitable donation, and those in need get healthy and nutritious food.
And we get to tackle the estimated one-third of all food that goes to waste in America. We distribute a grocery bag of "dry goods", canned food and packaged food such as rice, beans and pasta. Then folks push a cart down our distribution line, selecting whatever else we have for packaged food, and then make their selections of fresh fruit and vegetables, and bread and pastries. By state law any perishable food item must be distributed in a cooler; this includes eggs, dairy, meat, and refrigerated fruit & vegetables. Our patrons bring their own coolers, and we have a small supply of spares for those who need one. Out at the county trash & recycling station I'm always keeping an eye out for good
clean coolers being thrown away, especially those styrofoam cases companies like Omaha Steaks use to ship their food in, and bring them to the food bank to have as spares. Now that's recycling!
So, at the end of the line we give our patrons a cooler of perishable food, and out volunteers help folks out to their cars with everything. This is what it looks like:
That's Roger helping unload Walmart donations from our 12' enclosed trailer that can haul a couple thousand pounds of food. Yep, it's Cowboy Country out here.
And Roger again, helping package up the dry goods. Roger is a very busy retiree, helping at our food bank several times a week. In his "spare time" he's Senior Vice Commander at our local VFW Post. I never served in the military myself, and protested the Viet Nam and Dubya's Iraq war. And I am very proud to call Roger my friend and neighbor.
And that's Dan and Cindi helping package food for distribution. Cindi and her husband live on a property so rural there's no electricity. Dan is also a vet and VFW member. He had a Romney 2012 sticker still on his truck for long after the election. I used to tease him, asking him if he was still holding out for a recount. I voted for the other guy, the guy with the big ears and funny name; we still manage to get along very well and I'm also proud to call him my friend.
Last December we had a Student Day, where students from the local elementary school came over and helped us distribute food. They had a lot of fun, and learned an important lesson on the importance and joy of helping others. Some other pics from Student Day:
And Yours Truly also got my pic taken on Student Day:
As you might guess from my expression, I enjoy having my picture taken about as much as I enjoy having a tooth pulled.
And we continue to become more involved in the community. The local elementary school schedule is Monday through Thursday, and they approached us to see if we could perhaps prepare a package for the kids on the free lunch program to take home food items for breakfast and lunch for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We were all enthusiastic about the idea, but some expressed concern that we needed to make sure the kids weren't 'stigmatized', that if we gave them a brown bag or box to take home other kids might tease or make fun of them. So we came up with the idea of packaging the food in these fun, colorful, cloth reusable bags:
It was a big success! That's Mary Beth on the right, and Cathy on the left.
And I have a 5x8' utility trailer that I don't use very often, so I proposed bringing my trailer down Monday mornings and leave it all day for area residents and our patrons to drop off their recyclable materials - encouraging recycling by making it more convenient. That is also very successful, every Monday evening after food distribution I drive off with a trailer load of recyclables for the county to process.
Getting involved in the local community is a wonderful, rewarding experience. If you or someone you know can use assistance in having adequate, nutritional food by all means go or encourage them to go to a local community food bank - they are wonderful places, staffed by wonderful, caring volunteers. And if you have some time to spare I encourage you to volunteer and get involved in your local community food bank. You'll be very happy you did. A good place to start is FeedingAmerica.org. Feeding America is America's largest network of community food banks, with over 200, and with the largest network of corporate sponsors. They have a number of programs for providing assistance and guidelines for smaller food banks like ours.
Neighbors helping Neighbors - not a new idea, just a really, really good one.
Note: This is just a "feel good" diary, not a political diary. I'm not suggesting that this way of feeding America's needy through donations of food nearing expiration date from the likes of Walmart that they get to write off from their taxes is the "best" way of feeding those in need. It's just how we're dealing with the cutbacks in government support and funding. And it does address the huge amount of food that goes to waste while Americans go to bed hungry.