Helping the food insecure

Yesterday provided the Van Sligtenhorst family an opportunity to help, via the North Texas Food Bank, those people in our community who are food insecure (don't know where their next meal is coming from). My company provides me 24 hours of community service paid time off and since the kids are out of school and Josh is feeling good, we spend the day working together.

A few things we learned:
1 - Texas is ranked #1 of all states in food-insecure children
2 - Texas is ranked #2 of all states in food-insecure people (all ages)
3 - Texas has moved up in these rankings during the last two years
4 - Only 9% of the people that North Texas Food Bank supports are homeless. The remainder are people like you and me who, when they suddenly get sick or lose their job, are unable to provide a constant source of food for their families.
5 - We shouldn't work a full day after staying up way too late the night before. Our exchange student, Julia, and her family left yesterday morning so we stayed up late chatting and ensuring she was fully packed. She and Kate were up until 4:30am or so with shenanigans as a last hurrah. We miss her.



We spent the morning shift working the line in which boxes of salvaged and donated food are manually sorted into bins according to six categories (grains, breakfast, fruits, vegetables, proteins and miscellaneous). Kate's job (with my assistance) was to collect the emptied boxes, put them into the right configuration and then stack them on pallets (with Josh's help). Ethan's job was to empty the boxes on to a table for someone to check and put in the right bin. 2 full hours of nearly non-stop work.



We moved over to help out on the "senior line" for ~30 minutes before our lunch break, adding non-salvaged food items to boxes in assembly-line fashion. The majority of the others working that line were mentally disabled adults who come to volunteer often. Fabulous to see their involvement.

Since we worked both shifts, we came back early enough to help those who are full-time volunteers and are responsible for preparing and overseeing all the volunteer groups that come to serve. We jumped in and set up the senior line for the next round, creating a huge pile of boxes from new flattened boxes and tape wands, laying out the rolling table for the line and opening the food boxes to ensure easy access to the food items.

Then we were assigned to work on the food boxing line for the afternoon. Our job was to weigh completed boxes (pulled from the six bins we had helped create in the morning) and add miscellaneous items until they were around 31 pounds. I believe we completed 4 pallets of 36 boxes each in the 2+ hours we worked.

It's great to spend time helping the community as a family!