Food Rescue

It was time. Time to settle on some way to give back, meaningfully, to the community. It had been a long time since I contributed a significant amount of my free time (50-100 hours per year) as a volunteer.

The catch is, most organizations want people who will commit to a regular schedule. I get it: they need to know that their work will get done. But having spent nearly all of my life tethered to a daily schedule (years of school and many more years of work), I resisted signing up for that. Last year, I volunteered opportunistically. [It wasn't enough.]

I thought about Second Harvest. Having volunteered there many years ago (one time?), and subsequently supported them, I pulled up their calendar of volunteer shifts. [Whoa!] Plenty of opportunities. I picked one.

The scale of the operation was mind-boggling. As a new volunteer, the orientation was a bit overwhelming. Working in a section of a huge warehouse, we would be doing “food rescue.” Checking dates on perishables, discarding spoiled produce, and sorting everything: cans and jars go here, snacks go there, baked goods go here, healthy beverages go there ... on and on. Spoiled produce would be collected to feed farm animals. At the end of our shift, we swept the floors and sanitized our carts and work surfaces.

Second Harvest picks up the food (and other staples, like laundry detergent and paper goods) from retail stores and other sources, and supplies it to local organizations (e.g., community food banks) that distribute it to the people who need it.

I left thoroughly impressed. The work was well-organized. My fellow volunteers were eager and diligent workers. Our impact was huge: sorting through and processing pallets of food that would help hundreds of households. Products that, until a few years ago, would have simply been dumped in landfills.

When I got home, I signed up for my next shift. I can do this.