Food Bank!

Since today was my last day working at the food bank, I realized that I still have more to write about.

This first project was so amazing. Last Monday one of the staff asked if any of us wanted to tutor a student in math and I immediately volunteered. I was paired with a girl to study for the GED. It turned out she really needed help with English and Social Studies, which I was less excited about. I had no idea what the GED tested and assumed it would be similar to junior or senior year English class, but boy was I wrong. She showed me the packet of papers she was expected to complete for the week, most of which focused on similes and metaphors in a paragraph of text that was provided. I tutored her for about 2 hours and in that time learned that she is 25 and dropped out of school at 17. What surprised me most was that she was pretty much unable to read. She said teachers were never willing to explain things to her more than once and she slipped through the cracks and she was so grateful that I was willing to repeat my explanation multiple times for her. The next day I was assisting at a mobile food distribution and I saw her again when she came to pick up food for her family. The Sacramento Food Bank really provides assistance to those in need in just so many ways. I loved that I was able to directly interact with the clients.

Today I helped with the clothing program. 1000 articles of clothing are donated each day to families in need. Volunteers sort through the clothing, organize them on the racks and bag the clothes that the clients have picked out. I have never worked with people that are so appreciative of your help before. Even when clients approach their limit of clothing for their visit, they are almost always polite and hand me items to return. I'm definitely going to miss working here. The food bank set a high standard for our first project and it's going to be hard for other projects to be as great!

Last night a team returned from Catalina and everyone seemed to have a great time, so I'm really excited to be going there after new years! Yay for 2 weeks at home though! Happy Holidays everyone!