Today we woke up rather early due to the fact that we were
volunteering at “Harvest Hope”. Harvest Hope is a local food bank that serves
20 of the 46 counties in South Carolina. There are many programs that this food
bank has and we focused on the “mobile pantry” program. This program is awesome
because Harvest Hope teams up with local churches that deliver supplementary
food boxes to families in need around South Carolina. Our first task was to
assemble what it seemed a billion boxes that the families in need would receive
their food. Most of us grabbed a buddy and in no time those billion boxes were
assembled.
After our box assembly was done, we all got in a line around
a conveyor belt where we each were responsible for pitting a food item inside
the box. I have to admit that I was a little scared to due this due to the fact
that I was thinking about the “I Love Lucy” episode where she had to work in
front of a conveyor belt. If you have seen that episode you know what I'm
talking about, and if you haven't, let's just say that it doesn't end well.
After a while we all got a rhythm
going and we were knocking boxes out super fast. We even had to stop a few
times to assemble more boxes! In the end we assembled 774 boxes in total. I
really hope that what we did today impacted those 774 families because from
experience I know that anything helps.
When we returned we were treated to dinner at Villa Tronco
by Kirk Litton, the sole owner of Triple M Broadcasting and UMD alum! Villa
Tronco is the oldest local Italian restaurant in the area, going back three
generations, and the food was amazing- especially the tiramisu, gelato, and
bread pudding for dessert! When we got back we had our reflection session. The
first part of our reflection focused on the purpose of AB, why we chose to go
on the trip, and what service really means. First we discussed the difference
between volunteering and service. We decided that volunteering simply refers to
an unpaid position, whereas service alludes to actually impacting the community
in need. We also discussed the difference between a trip and experience; a trip
is something more short-term-- you go somewhere for a period of time, come back
home, and that’s that. An experience is more meaningful and often
life-changing, not just limited to the trip.
In terms of why we do AB, we listed 14 reasons as a group,
ranging from learning more about nutrition and food insecurity, to meeting more
service-oriented people, to aiding the issues related to childhood obesity in
SC. Jessica then asked, “How many of those benefit you (the volunteers) and how
many benefit the community?”-- we realized that an overwhelming majority were
for the benefit of the volunteers, and only 2 directly involved benefiting the
community. It should be noted, however, that some of the “selfish” ones were
things like “learning more about the causes of childhood obesity”-- technically
this is for our benefit, and if we did not use this information it would be
selfish. However, if we apply this knowledge to helping our community back home
in MD, it’s certainly not a bad thing.
We also continued our discussion on voluntourism from
yesterday. At Harvest Hope, a lot of us noticed that the food we were packing
was not very healthy at all. In fact, my station was putting in the
"assorted meals," which comprised of Skittles, chocolate pudding, and
Nutrigrain bars. I was towards the end of the belt, and was often putting these
packages in boxes already filled with Velveeta, loaded mashed potatoes,
Bisquick or fried chicken batter mix, and Ramen. Rebecca (the volunteer
organizer at Harvest Hope) had warned us of this, and explained that junk food
is still better than no food at all, but regardless it still hurt a little
putting such unhealthy food in the boxes, especially because sugary things
wouldn’t even help satiate hunger. However, the boxes weren’t the only things
the families were getting (they also got produce and vegetables that we didn’t
see), which definitely made us feel better too. As did the fact that this
organization helps hundreds of thousands of people a year!
After these discussions, we played a few (many more) great
rounds of Mafia, pretty much killing Ryan every round because of his habit of
giggling and blushing any time anyone accuses him and always being confused by
Ran’s unvarying response, “It’s not me, because I’m not the mafia.” Pumped for
Eat Smart, Move More tomorrow! :)
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