Well.
This had been quite an overdue post. I’d been meaning to write this because I went volunteering around the middle of January. Alas, my mind just forgot about it until my mother reminded me that it was time to do another volunteering count.
So I guess I write about it now?
________
Volunteering: A work in which one goes somewhere and does a service without expecting anything in return (money, givebacks, etc.)
Well, that is kind of what I did, with my friend Addison. So our school had a Martin Luther King Jr. Project in which we could either go solo or in groups to do something like volunteer or raise awareness for something like feminism or BLM. Anyways, we had started to think of where to go, what to do.
January 11th: Addi and I had spent most of our work cycle (work time) trying to make calls to the supervisors who ran some of the places that we wanted to do community service in. Calling them was partly challenging, due to the reason that we kept getting put on hold, transferred to other people, and also were getting misunderstood. One of the things I had thought was funny but sad was the fact that I was talking to one of the supervisors at a Senior Center of [where we live] and she mistook me for a parolee, specifically asking if I had a parole officer she could talk to and make an appointment for. I tried not to laugh as I explained in the politest way I could to tell her that I was in fact, a grade-school student, forgetting to mention that precursor to the conversation and the lady apologized profusely. I was practically in tears as I put down the phone and probably wouldn’t forget the talk we had for a long time.
January 12: We were trying to the best of our abilities, by which I mean around 36.55% of our abilities, to try and formulate plans on how we’d be able to convince our parents to get out of school for a few hours either tomorrow or day after so that we could finally DO the community service instead of just spending countless hours of school planning and planning. I took initiative on my part by making phone calls to the final destination, which was the main food bank of our state. Meanwhile, Addi got a truckload of information about what to do, what protocol we’d have to follow once going in the building, and also what to expect. Our goals for the remainder of the project was to see what day we’d have to be let out from school grounds, along with showing our parents the permissions for us to get out of school on either Thursday or Friday at 1pm-4pm and get our mini field trip approved by them.
January 13: Addi and I were talking about how we would be needing a backup plan if our original plan to go to the food bank would fail. My dad had signed for his new school’s background check to let our early dismissal seem quite like a field trip, but since we were confused as to whether or not it would work, our school supervisor (Mr. JT) suggested that we should figure out our backup plan if the background check didn’t pass. Apart from that, since we had finalized the timings for the Food Bank already, we were just reading about the nonprofit organization and found out that it provided food for those facing hunger in 34 counties of our state for over 40 years. Another one of our friends, ANL, had organized a group to make positive chalk and tempera paint messages on the concrete sidewalks of our school, so I along with Addison did some art to take our mind off of the possible and probable fail of our plan…
January 14: It was finally the day of the project and Addison and I were beginning to worry about whether or not we would be able to go to the food bank. My stomach was hurting of anticipation and lemonade that I had downed from one of my friends.
However, good news had come and the odds were in our favor- Mr. JT had quickly come over to our end and informed us that my dad’s check had been approved and we could go. After the confusion and overall happiness dawned over Addison (who took a while to register what JT said), we had made phone calls and made sure there was no communication gap between our parents and the supervisors at the food bank.
We had left at around 12:15, and with my father as a chaperone, we went to volunteer at the food bank we had made reservations in earlier. After we waited in the lobby for 15 or so minutes, we had finally went into the warehouse where all the food was kept, most packaged, but some unpackaged and waiting for us to finish the job. The job, meaning Addi’s and my job, was to pack Capri-Sun and Kool-Aid juice packets into big cartons and put them on a cart for storing away. We had to check whether or not there were straws on the bags, if the bags had leaks, but fortunately most bags were fine. Music was playing from the large speakers near our work table, so that had made our working time more efficient and easy, since we both had better focus with music. Honestly, the project made me realize that community service in places like our state’s national Food Bank would be a really good experience for people to understand how others felt when they were not privileged enough to buy or make food on their own. It impacted others by giving them security in eating and drinking for their necessities and it made both Addison and I feel good about what we did.
January 15: I corrected and edited the pictures that my dad had taken and sent them to Addison (you didn’t think i’d put them here, did you?)
Anyways, the experience was fun and I learned a lot about famine issues. Thanks for reading this slightly different post I made!
<3 Gianna