Recently I along with the Parish’s other confirmands visited the local food bank where we helped support the volunteers in sorting and storing donated items. The first thing most of us realised was the organisation displayed, the volunteers had organized all the food into dated crates and there was a streamline process of the intake of donations. When we entered, we were greeted warmly by the staff and were promptly set up with tasks namely sorting out salt and tea bags into smaller containers to be either handed out or to be stored for later.
Whilst there, we learned how important it was to date the items as it was explained to us about how the warehouse stores food that has best before dates that are years into the future and that they needed to ensure all produce that they hand out had not expired. We also had it explained to us who visits this food bank and learnt that the people there were people referred by someone as they had fallen on harder times not just homeless people as many of us had assumed. So although the food bank had subverted our expectations it was all around an interesting experience that opened our eyes to work that these centres do and allowed us to lend a hand to help our local community.
-Lara