On December 26th—28th members of the East Cobb Branch of AYLUS packed lunches for people at Garden Terrace under the YMCA Holiday/School Break Lunch Program. The program collects and provides free lunch to children in low-income areas when school is not in session. In this program, students would pack lunches of a variety of things that contain all the needed vitamins and nutrients for a child to grow.
At YMCA, we first packed the goods that were not temperature sensitive, this was to allow meals to be served faster. The temperature sensitive goods would be packed on sight on demand to preserve the temperature. Once all the non–temperature sensitive goods were packed, we loaded all packed lunch bags and waters to the bus, then to serve the meals on site. There, the YMCA staff talked to the contact person for the volume they want. Afterwards, the we set the table, and unload the foods and drink from the bus. Finally, we are ready to pass the meals to children and family.
On the 26th, the members did their tasks and went to Garden Terrace Apartment Complex to serve meals. We got there early so the apartment manager had to first tell the residents the lunch meals were there. Our bus also honked its horn to tell the residents that we came early. The day was fairly cold, not many people showed up, we asked them for how many lunches they would want. As there were sure to be extras, many got extra meals for later or family members that did not come. After a while, lunch time was over, and we gave the remaining food to a family.
On the 27th, members of AYLUS started the day by transporting a variety of donated products such as toiletries and blankets into a vehicle to be distributed to families in need of such items. Then we started to pack the lunches into paper bags decorated with messages by volunteers. After packing the food items, we rode the bus to two separate locations. The first stop was an apartment complex, and half of the volunteers were dropped off there. The second stop was a townhouse apartment complex very much resembling a neighborhood. We drove to the playground within the complex and waited for the children to come to us to receive a lunch. After a while, a soccer game was also started by the volunteers and we invited the neighborhood children to play with us. It was a little cold outside, but we were joined by a couple of children who were willing to play.
On the 28th, we stayed inside and packed lunches. The previous night, it had rained a lot, and the places that we were to visit were experiencing a flash flood warning, so the supervisors of the charity event exempted the volunteers from delivering lunches, for the safety of us volunteers. We packed lunches for the Garden Terrace Apartment complex and the townhouse apartment complex from the previous two days.
Attendances: Stanley Lu (8hrs), Maxwell Jiang (6hrs), Delrick Shen (6hrs), Jason Xu (3hrs), Eileen Zhang (6hrs), Raymond Jiang (3hrs), Emily Sun (3hrs), Kevin Shen (3hrs), Cynthia Ruan (3hrs)
Reported by: Maxwell Jiang, Eileen Zhang
