On Saturday February 23rd, Center team members and their families volunteered to support Gleaners Food Bank. Jen Hackmann, Client Service Manager said we really pulled our weight.
Thank you, thank you for all the support for the 1st Gleaners volunteering event - we had a total of 214 pounds of donations (I think Tim’s donation of multiple cans of fruit cocktail put us over the 200 pound mark),” Jen reported. “And according to the organizers at Gleaners, this food donation will provide 178 meals for our hungry neighbors in need. Gleaners collects over 2.5 million pounds of food from food drives like ours and distributes the donations to more than 600 partnering groups in need each year.”
After an orientation and video introduction to Gleaners Food Bank, our volunteers got to work. We went from standing still, trying to figure out what we were going to be doing, to a full-on assembly line working at what felt like a 100 miles per hour. Jen remembers saying to Troy Wyman, CFP ®and Gerri Harmer, Client Service Associate, “I have a new and GREAT respect for assembly line work!” Apparently it is not as easy as it looks! Some of us packed bags of fruit while others worked with packaged food, putting together large boxes of noon-perishable goods to be handed out to families in need.
And despite the demanding morning of helping out at the food bank, we couldn’t get enough! We’ve already planned another Gleaners volunteer day on Saturday, September 21st from 9am – noon. Anyone who would like to join our group is more than welcome. If you happen to get the volunteering itch on your own one Saturday morning, you can just show up at 9am on any Saturday at the Detroit Gleaners Distribution Center. You do not need to be part of a group and the Detroit Distribution Center is the only site that takes “walk-in” volunteers.