Personal Narrative: Volunteering At Harvest Outreach Center

My time spent at the Harvest Outreach center was truly a learning experience. My first

days were spent at the Grocery Cost Share store. They utilized my computer and customer

service skills by placing me in the membership office. I was able to assist their existing

members and new members with paperwork, replacing membership cards and inputting

membership information into their data system. My being in the membership office was truly an

eye opener for me as to the little amount of income people actually bring into their households

and the amount of people sharing a household together. I also was able help process one of

their trucks and stock the shelves with new product that came in.

The next couple of days I was schedule to

Someone needs to seriously clean and organize the store.

Volunteering at Harvest showed me a variety of social problems that people in our

society face. Looking back at the people I came across, there are so many struggling to

survive. Socially we have problems from single mothers, homeless families, and economically

strained families. When I started, I knew from my Social Problem class that people are “poor”

and that we as a nation have big problems.

Vero Beach has a problem, it is called poor and homeless people, unfortunately Vero

Beach is probably not the greatest community to be homeless in. Vero Beach to me “sweeps

our issues of homelessness under the rug.” Why? We are a tourist community and they don’t

want to detour any tourists from coming to Vero as we would lose a lot of income. John, the

Crisis Counselor said during his one class “It is a shame that some of you don’t show up

at a City Council meeting to ask “What are we doing about the homeless issue in Vero Beach”.

Wouldn’t that be interesting to hear a council member's response to that