Sunnyvale Community Services

“I know you just finished leading a volunteer project,” the email message read. “But we have a few that are still leaderless, and we heard you might be willing to help out.”

I'm a softie (and, the folks who run our company's annual volunteer service extravaganza know it).

I browsed the list to see if any would sync with my schedule.

Not that one. Nope, not that one, either.

I found a winner: Sunnyvale Community Services.

We often hear about the high cost of living in the Bay Area these days, and the challenges faced by low-wage earners, the jobless, senior citizens—but it's not a new problem: SCS has been in operation since 1970. They provide much more than food support for those in need. Caseworkers help folks with all sorts of setbacks—from finding a mechanic to fix a broken car, to emergency financial help to pay the bills. It doesn't take much, when someone is living on the edge, to topple over. SCS is there to catch them before they fall, before the damage is too great (loss of a job for want of a car, loss of an apartment for missing a rent payment).

Some non-profits need brain power; today, SCS just needed more hands.

Our task was to load grocery bags with non-perishables: canned green beans, refried beans, spaghetti sauce, peaches, tuna, plus peanut butter, dry beans, raisins, rice, and quinoa. [Quinoa?!]

We quickly became a well-tuned machine: some folks fed the assembly line with bags and food (and recycled the cardboard and plastic packaging); others formed the assembly line to pack each bag “just so” (forming a stackable package), while others wheeled the finished products to waiting pallets and stacked them.

Six hundred bags packed and stacked in less than 90 minutes!