Doing my part...

Often times I feel helpless or useless in the sense that I’m not able to make an impact on this world, my community, one person who really needs someone. I think that’s a fairly common feeling for most of us because it’s easy to feel insignificant next to the grandeur of large organizations or people who are able to give wads of money away. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the many needs individuals in this world have.

However, I feel better when I have done something that I know is helping others. Be it buying the Street Roots (great local program here in PDX) newspaper from the homeless man standing in front of Powell’s or taking a name off the giving tree at X-mas time. A month or so ago I decided that I was going to make more of an effort to do good things. My first step in that was to sign up for some volunteer work. My first shift was last night and I had a great time!

My friend Chrissy and I went to the Oregon Food Bank and helped label and repack cans of salmon. It was actually pretty easy work as work goes, but it was hands on, and will directly affect people in my community. We were there for two and a half hours but the time went very quickly so we were surprised when it was time to leave.

Our volunteer coordinator offered to give us a tour before we left and everyone knows I love a tour, so I was first in line! Lucky for us, only three people wanted the tour, so we had some one on one attention and got to ask questions and see things close up.

The Oregon Food Bank has a huge garden where they teach people how to grow their own food, even in containers like five gallon buckets for those people who may not have a yard to dig up and plant. We met their little lady chickens, saw some huge plants, and then went back to the warehouse for the rest of our tour.

The warehouse is quite a site. It’s the only food bank building in the country that was designed specifically for food bank usage so it’s special. It’s also huge, and completely owned by the food bank. They service 57 million pounds of food a year and serve many, many agencies in our area as well as all over Oregon and Clark County, Washington.

Our tour guide even took us in the freezer which is kept at 10 below! Brrr! Poor Chissy was in Capri pants and a little white shirt…

Overall it was a great experience. We’d already signed up to go back on the 20^th, but today I signed up for a few more days in September too.

On the 25^th of Septmeber, if you’re in Portland, take advantage of the great food drive they are putting on. See below! Clink on the picture for more details I’ll be in Mexico otherwise I would so be there.