What do I do at the Food Bank?

My volunteer placement puts me in a position to see the large scale representation of how much food is donated and sent out on a daily basis. 


A daily shift is as follows:


7:45 am- Sign in and receive a name tag and proceed to volunteer break area for instructions


8:00 am- The volunteers are organized and placed into work groups depending on skill level 


8:15 am-9:45ish- We work together as an assembly line to sort all the incoming donations. During this time some people work on boxing together kits to send home with kids to provide meals for them and their families, also general kits to be used by all those in need. 


9:45ish- Break, we have a short break and get to interact with all the volunteers who are working that shift. This is my favorite time because I get to become acquainted with the different spread of people who are volunteering and hear their individual stories. 


10:00 am-11:00am- Finish boxing, sorting, bagging things and at 11 am the first shift is finished. The volunteers can choose to sign out or stay on for the 12pm-3pm shift.


This is the description from the website about what the weekday volunteers do:


Sort, screen, box and shelve food items, including fresh produce.
Individuals and groups are needed to help sort food into boxes that are distributed to the Food Bank’s partner agencies. Individual volunteers need to attend a 1 hour orientation, held at 12:45 pm on Wednesdays.  Groups—corporate, business, church, youth or other—are not required to attend a Wednesday orientation. Call (510) 635-3663 ext. 308 to sign up. 


I hope to eventually have the opportunity to volunteer with the emergency help line to have more contact with the people who use the food bank to get information on where they can secure food. Also, there is opportunities to work in the office filing paperwork, general clerical work, making phone calls on behalf of the food bank and working on special projects.


We usually have 1-2 supervisors on shift who are employees of the Food Bank that give us direction and instructions. Also, our volunteer manager is Sheila Burks, she makes cameos every once and awhile, she is very grateful for each and every volunteer no matter what brought us to the Food Bank. 


Anthropology has helped me to become an affective volunteer because I feel that I am able to relate to all of the different people there. I am interested in learning about all of the different reasons each of the volunteers are there. Also, I would like to help get the message of the Food Bank out there, they want to address hunger at its root cause, I think being an Anthropology student I would be helpful in examining what these root causes may be and how we can be affective in combating this problem.