After volunteering three times with the social action committee and high school group from Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church in the previous years, the Houston Food Bank became very familiar both in regards of their history and how their volunteerism works. The Houston Food Bank is a non-profit organization that seeks donations of non-perishable food items to serve the low-income families in eighteen counties across Texas. However, during a recent trip to the food bank with the University of Houston-Downtown College of Business, the interactions with a larger group of classmates became more dynamic. Three main topics involving group work at the Houston Food Bank are service learning, community service, and volunteerism. Service learning …show more content…
Community service occurs when a group of people comes to work together for the benefit of an institution. For instance, the Houston Food Bank may be a requirement for schools, but it helps aid those in need. These all tie together because they show how a group of people can learn from their experience. These have differences, though. For example, while volunteering is just doing a good deed for the community, service learning is actually learning from this experience. Volunteering is also different from community service, because volunteering is broader than community service. These do have similarities though; for instance, a lesson can be learned from both service learning and volunteering, though it is not requirement for volunteering. Volunteering is more for the good of nature to help others. Community service can be similar to service learning because they are both ways of providing a service to the community or a particular …show more content…
They are a non-profit organization this collects and distributes food for hunger relief charities. The food bank works with 600 food pantries, senior centers, soup pantries, and other agencies strictly with giving donations. With the help of volunteers, the Houston Food Bank sorts, packs, and re-distributes food to community. In 2008, the Houston Food Bank merged with End Hunger, making more effective use of community resources by working together. During the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the organization successfully distributed 74,000,000 nutritious meals. The organization relies strictly on donations. They, however, will accept monetary donations in order to buy food. For example, in 2002, a privately held supermarket chain in Texas, called HEB Grocery Company, teamed up with the Houston Texans in a campaign called ‘Sacks for Hunger’ where the team will donate $1000 for every sack made. As of 2013, the ‘Sacks for Hunger’ program has successfully raised over $47,000 dollars for the Houston Food Bank, the equivalent of 141,000 meals for hungry
Selecting to do my service learning at Harvest Hope Food Bank was a very impactful experience. This was so, because of the fact that I have never volunteered at a food bank until now. The organization was able to connect me with the required skills I will practice throughout my career as a professional social worker, therefore better preparing me for assisting clients who may be dependent on my services.
According to the “Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet” on Feeding America’s website, in 2014 there were over 48 million Americans living in food insecure households, which included 32 million adults and 15 million children. For over 35 years, Feeding America continues to be in the forefront in solving this crisis by providing food to people in need through a nationwide network of food banks. In the late 1960s, Van Hengel established the nation’s first food bank and years later established the first national organization of food banks, Second Harvest. Second Harvest was later called America’s Second Harvest the Nation’s Food Bank Network and in 2008, the national organization changed its name to Feeding America.
The vision of the food bank is “sharing food and bringing hope.” The goal of the food bank is to provide food for as many people in need as they can. On top of that, they would also like to end hunger problems as a whole. The central food bank is able to produce twelve meals for one dollar. They also do not charge agencies for the food they distribute. Last year they were able to distribute more than twenty eight million pounds of food in the central Missouri area. The food bank relies on various partnerships and volunteers to be able to produce and distribute as much food as they do. That is their mission, to bring together people in the community in order to feed those in need.
As we sit down to eat our dinner, millions of Americans are affected by hunger. Food banks such as Harry Chapin Food Bank make it possible for low-come families to be able to be nourished and survive through these tough economic times. Through Harry Chapin Food Bank’s partnership with Walmart, Publix, and Win Dixie and the engagement of volunteers; they create sustainability and the ability to fight together as one against hunger, is possible.
I chose to do my service learning project at Feed My Starving Children. I chose this service learning project because I had prior knowledge and experience by doing it with my family and church. Feed My Starving Children has been a huge impact to those who have participated in this service experience because their mission is to pack meals that go to very hungry children around the world. Being from a single parent family, it is hard for us to not be concerned about where the money for food is coming from, yet we have food on our tables for everyday meals. Therefore, I can’t imagine what it is like for those who experience hunger.
This Saturday is the big day! From 11AM until 2PM, S.A.F.E. Food Pantry volunteers will be at the Giant Food in River Hill located at 6050 Daybreak Circle in Clarksville, Maryland to collect safe food and monetary donations. We hope you will be a Food Warrior and bring your haul to the Giant on May 7. You can sign up for the Food Warrior program by going to our Food Drive webpage.
In our learning through service class, our group project was to help a local food bank at Milford. The group was divided up depending on the amount of assistance that other people at the food bank need. I observed many things at the food bank which corresponds with the film “A Place at the Table”. In the film, I noticed that social programs or charities volunteers are rather lacking, there were not a lot of volunteers. At the food bank, there were quite a handful, but not enough to keep with the influx of work the food bank needs to finish for the day. I know that working at the food bank is quite gloom and happy, the prior knowledge I use to choose the community address that I think should be addressed the most is based on the coverage of
In 2013 91, 746 food hampers were distributed through the Waterloo region, in a population of 563,000, that means that 16.3% of people in the Waterloo region accessed a food bank at some time in 2013. Having the ability to go to the grocery store is a privilege many Canadians don’t recognize. Even in Canada, may people cannot afford to go to a grocery store every week, many people have to make the decision to have good food for week or pay the rent. Food banks often bring a stigma with the name. Many people say that food banks bring trouble to the communities, that the food banks increase the amount of troubled individuals in the area. Those who use food banks and social programs are just regular people who have fallen on hard times, and just need a little bit of assistance to get back on their feet.
According to their website: "Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding God’s children hungry in body and spirit. The approach is simple: children and adults hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children, and we ship these meals to our distribution partners."
World Vision – My family sponsors a child through World Vision, so this one was particularly interesting to look into. World Vision spends 84.5 percent of their earnings on the program, 4.9 percent on administrative costs, and 10.6 percent on fundraising. They have a two star rating on Charity Navigator, with a 70.08 score in the financial category. They do, however, have a score of 96.00 in the transparency category. For stewardship, I would say they could do better in regards to their fundraising costs.
It is a non- profit organization that collects and distributes food to hunger relief charities and is largest food bank in the southeast Texas counties and is a certified member of Feeding America. It was also named top charity in Texas by Charity Navigator for financial performance and accountability. Their mission is leading the fight against hunger. The Houston Food Bank provides 74 million nutritious meals to food pantries, soup kitchens, senior centers and other agencies, feeding 800,000 people each year. The food that they provide comes from many sources in the food industry. The Houston Food Bank, warehouse and with the help of volunteers, sort, pack and redistributed to the community. I was assigned to the Backpack Buddy program. This program is designed to fill in the gap for kids who go home to little or no meals on the weekend. Although there are many kinds who are on the free meal program at their schools during the week, these same kids still need to eat over the weekend. The Backpack Buddy program was proven to help kids feel healthier, more alert and ready to learn. Schools and other locations discretely passed out the backpack buddies to the top neediest kids in the school. These backpacks were filled with child friendly, non perishable, easily consumed and vitamin fortified food. The Houston Food bank made this possible with the help of volunteers each week.
The Guelph Food Bank, is an essential organization in Guelph. The purpose of the food bank is to provide food to the less fortunate. With an unpredictable economy, many people are living paycheque to paycheque, trying to survive on little income. Due to the high costs of rent, not all people are able to purchase groceries and rely on the food bank to provide them with the essentials. The Guelph food bank also serves people who are unemployed as well as people who are living with illnesses. Welfare cheques simply do not provide enough to cover all the expenses that an average person has to deal with. Therefore, the Guelph foodbank’s mission is to not only provide food to the unemployed but to also help people who do not have enough money to purchase food. It not only wants to help people short term, but its goal to help people in the long term by helping them become independent of organizations.
The food bank at the AOC, called Sandy Lanier Nutrition Center and Nutritional Counseling, is only open on Tuesday and Wednesday from 12 pm to 6 pm (AOC, 2017). The need to have the food bank available 5 days a week would benefit the individuals that are not able to get to the nutrition center to utilize the benefit of the counseling and getting the nourishment that they are needing. The individuals could be sick, have other appointments, visiting family, or in counseling during those times and days. If there were more volunteers able to be there and assist the community and allow the extra days and times, where the donations could be accepted, more individuals are available to get the needed nutritional items to make the meals to assist in the side effects of the retro-viral
Community Service is a great opportunity to make a difference in the area you live in. There are so many ways to volunteer. Some people are given chances to do community service when they need to pay off fines for tickets. Most people simply do because they love getting involved. It’s their way of making the community a cleaner, healthier place.
Though, the concept of community service is not very new its importance has developed in the past few years. There are thousands of organizations all over the world that engage and hold millions of young people all through the world. People of all age groups, with a maximum number of youth are involved in the process of community service. Community-based organizations include; social service organizations, non-profit providers and associations that engage both young people as well adults as volunteers. The process is beneficial both for the individuals as well as the society. Without community service people would not know the meaning of charity and giving back. Community service can be defined as a service that is performed for the benefit of the public. Community service is not a responsibly or an obligation; it is a commitment. A person must want to do it with good intentions and not because they are being forced to do so. Basically, community service is a way for a person to give back to a community in which they live.