On Thursday May 11, a team of folks from the VPCSS Team (Vice President for Campus Services and Stewardship – AKA – Facilities) had a chance to volunteer at Community Servings in Jamacia Plain.
Prior to the visit, we reached out to Community Servings to sign up for this volunteer opportunity. The staff at Community Servings were super helpful! We were fortunate to get the Transportation Office’s support as the site is not very easy to access from public transportation.
Our group loaded up in the van about 12:30 and arrived in JP just a few minutes before our scheduled arrival of 1:00 PM. BTW – you can volunteer for morning, afternoon or evening shifts. All shifts are 4 hour commitments.
The Staff at Community Servings were very friendly and well organized. They have amazing facilities to support their mission. After we signed in, we were escorted to a briefing room where they showed a short video about how Community Servings was set up, described the assignments we would be given, talked about making sure we worked safely with sharp tools and kept the surfaces and our hands clean. We then put on aprons, hair nets and washed our hands before putting on our gloves.
When we entered into the food prep area, there was a staff person that explained each of our jobs – some of us were packaging pasta salad, others were packaging soup and the third group was preparing granola bars prior to baking. We were partnered with at least one other “regular volunteer.” I believe there are a group of retired people that will work 4 hour shifts two or three days a week preparing meals. There is also a group of paid staff that perform some of the cooking and cleaning jobs. Everyone we met were super friendly and willing to help.
The work was much different than what we do each day – repetitive – almost like an assembly line. For me – this was a great break. Was able to focus my brain on the task at hand, and all of a sudden – all those other thoughts that are typically racing through my brain were not important. Had a job to do, and I had to keep up with my colleagues I was working with. If I slowed down, the person ahead of me in the packaging process would be impacted – I just wanted to work as quickly as the rest of the team. At the same time – we were able to have some great conversations with each other – mostly about stuff outside of work. We talked about our families, hobbies, jobs we did when we were teenagers, our pets and lots of other silly things that we never discuss at work.
The time seemed to fly by. As we finished one packaging job, there was another job ready for us to take on. They kept us so busy, and it really felt good as packaged up the meals to know that in a small way I was helping someone that was struggling with a health issue and was unable to prepare healthy meals for themselves and their families.
Over all – this was an amazing experience for me and our VPCSS team. We hope to do it again soon.
