During the end of June and early July, I worked at the Mercer Street Friends Food Bank in the morning shift as a volunteer. After watching the video online and seeing what it’s like to work at a food bank, I was excited to be helping.
The first day I went with Erick and Alissa, who are also members of Greater Princeton AYLUS. We helped pack a variety of canned food such as soups, vegetables, and protein. Using the assembly line first adapted by Henry Ford, we could be very efficient in speeding up the process and putting together as many bags as we could each time to help the less fortunate.
Working at the Mercer Street Friends Food Bank was fun and time seemed to fly by. We, together with other volunteers, were brought into a giant sized warehouse with immensely tall shelves full of canned items and other food provided by sponsors and donated by individuals. The weather was extremely hot that day, there was no air conditioning inside the warehouse, only fans to provide air circulation. We were divided into six stations, each with different canned food to put into the bags. I worked at the second station, both times, and my job was to put two cans of vegetables and two cans of soup in every bag. Each cart had six bags, so I had to put twenty-four cans on each cart. The lady in charge told me I had the hardest job out of everyone in all the stations of the assembly line, since I had to put the most items in each bag. Keeping up to speed was very important but also needed to be organized and putting the cans in the right position so the other volunteer after me had it easy to put their items in the bag with enough space.
The second time I went was more difficult than the first time. Time seemed to go by much slower as we had fewer volunteers that day, and the fans were far aways from the working stations because of concerns that the wind would blow away the plastic bags. Not only was the working condition harder, but other tasks such as transferring cans from the shelves to the working cart and throwing away the cardboard and plastic in their respective places also slowed down the productive process. Despite this, some employees of the food bank helped a lot, they walked from station to station helping with packing the food, transferring the cans off the shelf, and cleaning up the leftover garbage. At the end of the morning shift, we were proud to put together 540 bags full of cereal, protein, vegetables, soups, snacks, and much more!
Volunteering at the Food Bank has taught me lots of skills, including how to communicate with others and improve working efficiency in a short time. Working nonstop for 3.5 hours was very tiring, however, knowing that I am helping others is a great feeling. I’m looking forward to going back next week!
Reported by Sarah Yan (7/8, 2 hrs).
