On Sunday afternoon, I spent a gorgeous fall day at our first Food Bank @ Foothills.We had over thirty amazing Foothill UU Volunteers including my teen son and many other families with teens, plus staff from the Food Bank. Although we only had a few “customers” families visiting…it ended up to be a great trial run to get all our ducks in a row.
This was a “soft opening” and conscious decision by the Food Bank who had decided not to advertise yet to have the month of October as a dry run for this big pilot program as the first mobile food pantry.
I was so impressed with all the UU volunteers; some being trained by Food Bank staff on the laptops to check families in, others setting up portable red wagons & many of the teens enthusiastically using their strength & high energy in such a positive way; setting up tables, unloading from the big Food Bank Semi Truck, large bags of apples, potatoes, and even Oreos which they wanted to delve into but knew this food was needed for the visiting families.
We now feel that we will have a great volunteer force, Foothills showcased that they will show up and be prepared, to accommodate much larger numbers of neighbors in the area with free food. Once word gets out we could have hundreds at our site, and it’s a comfort to know we have such an enthusiastic group of volunteers from Foothills.
Everyone unleashed courageous love by showing up and BEING there!
Later that evening I was helping my son with an essay about the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird”. He was looking at some quotes from the book on empathy, he said “You know Atticus says “climb into his skin and walk around” that is how you feel empathy. You know today I realized any of us could be one of the “customers” at our Foothill Food Bank, thanks mom, for sharing today with me, plus it was actually a lot of fun!”