On Tuesday, July 20th, in a volunteering event coordinated primarily by AYLUS member Vivian Sun, over 20 members of AYLUS spent their afternoon contributing to the food packaging effort at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey in Hillside, New Jersey. Due to the pandemic, the demand for volunteer work was much higher than usual, and our volunteers understood the importance of the job assigned to them- fill as many empty boxes as they could with a set list of food items. Armed with masks, gloves, and determination, members took on roles from box-builders to can-counters, efficiently working on the assembly line to churn out boxes faster than they could be shipped to storage. Each person’s niche was suitable for them, and they soon knew their task like the back of their hand. One volunteer, Kevin Ho, 12 years old, shares his experience working in the food bank:
The building was huge but looked run-down and old. After everyone got checked in and settled down, a woman who worked at the food bank led us to another part of the building. As we were following her, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of food there was. There were boxes after boxes after boxes of canned goods, cereal, and many other things. The place we had followed the woman to was a small area with a conveyor on one side, a fridge, and a bunch of cardboard in a corner. Behind the conveyor belt were boxes of different kinds of food.
“The closest emergency exit is over there.” the woman said, pointing to it. “If you need water we have some in the fridge.” she continued. “So, will you guys be able to make 150 boxes today?” she asked.
“Yes.” We replied in unison.
She then asked for four volunteers. These four people were in charge of making the boxes, which is what the cardboard was used for. The rest of the people including me went behind the conveyor belt. The woman came over and assigned us each to an item. Mine was canned applesauce and the woman told me to put one can in a box.
At first I was confused and didn’t really know what was going on but when the boxes started rolling down the conveyor, I understood. Our job was to put the correct amount of food into each box when it came and it was rather hard. It was really easy to mess up and miss a box or accidentally put an extra. For the people who were handling rice or milk, the job was really easy because all they had to do was look to see if there were the item they had in the box and if there wasn’t, they just put it in but for people handling cans, it wasn’t. I had to look through every can that was already in the box to make sure there wasn’t mine and when I confirmed there wasn’t, I put mine in. My spot was around the back of the conveyor so by the time a box got to me, there were a lot of cans inside. There were two times where I missed a box and once where I put an extra in. Putting food into boxes may sound easy but you couldn’t take a break because new boxes were constantly rolling in. We also occasionally had to open new packs of our food because we had finished the others and that didn’t take very long but it was really easy to miss a box while doing it.
After a couple hours of this, the last box was made and we were done. The woman gathered everyone up again and made an announcement. “What was our goal for this afternoon?”
“150.” everyone said.
“Well it is my pleasure, to inform you all that you have helped to feed 358 families.”
“Wooooo!” Everyone cheered. The food drive was a great opportunity to teach how great it is to help people in need. I hope we can do more in the future.
As it turns out, due to the sheer quantity of boxes created, the food bank has requested that we volunteer again, and we will be arranging another one soon. Good job AYLUS!
Reported by: Amy Xu
Activity Lead: Vivian Sun(5 hours), Dalina Cao(5 hours)
Participants:(3 hours for all)
Amy Xu, Lucy Liu, Kevin Ho, Kyle Xu, Kevin Xu, Ethan Zhou, Alvin Zhang, Albert He, Jessica Hong, Jason Liu, Mathew Ding, Cheryl Chen
