Open Door Food Pantry

Original post from October 2nd, 2013. View here

Today we had yet another successful service project! However, going into it we were unsure of what the outcome would be.

We faced several obstacles planning and organizing this particular service project. Although, no obstacle is ever too large!

Obstacles:

1. Project must be able to accommodate 24-27 students, 1 VISTA, 1 C2C Advocate, 1 instructor, and 2 site supervisors (about 30 people). 
2. Project must be related to the content of the class, College Readiness Reading course.
3. Project must create dialog between community members & students. 
4. We only had 1 hour and 20 minutes to perform project, this included leaving  and returning to campus.
5. Project must be completed during class time, which is 2:30-3:45pm on Monday, Wednesday & Friday.
6. Project must be both meaningful, and require little to no training. .  
7. Project must be a one time commitment but beneficial to the community partner.
8. Hearing back from the community partner in a timely manner. 

Obstacle elaborations and solutions.  

1. Many of our community partners are small establishments or only use large groups for 1 time events which are often planned far in advance. This is why we decided to move towards the idea of a food pantry. While many pantries in the area are small, they an still accommodate a larger group and there's ALWAYS plenty of work to go around.

2. The class usually has a specific book that they read, however there was not enough funding to get enough books for every student this semester.Therefore the instructor was able to give the students readings that related directly to food pantries. They also discussed different types of pantries  in the class.

3. This was probably one of the most difficult obstacles. We needed to find a community partner that could not only accommodate a very large group but also allow for students to meet and talk to community members. This is why we chose Open Door pantry. Open Door is a small choice pantry that is largely run by community members, with only 1 paid employee. Many of the community members that work have done so for years. We felt that the students would be able to learn from these wonderful people and hopefully meet those that use the pantry.

4. We needed to leave campus when the class would normally start and be back by the time the class would normally end in order to make sure that all of the students would be able to go. This limits our project options to only community partners within about 10-15 minutes from the school and means that we are only on sight for 40-60 minutes. Open Door pantry is only about 7 minutes away from campus, which made it an obviously choice.

5. If the time constraint wasn't already enough of an obstacle we needed to find a pantry that would be open from 2:30-3:45pm on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. In case you were wondering, this isn't a very popular time. We had narrowed down our choices to a few near-by pantries but none were open the for the entire time that we would be volunteering. While Open Door's pantry would be mostly close during the time we were volunteering, because of its proximity to campus we decided this was the best choice.

6 &7. As discussed we would only be on sight for no more than 60 minutes. This means that there is little to no time to actually do any form of training or lengthy orientation if wanted the students to be fully immersed in the experience. We also wanted to make sure that by being there for only a short time that we were being helpful and not detrimental. By choosing a pantry the work is pretty straight forward and the more hands there are to help the faster it goes. Open Door is such a small pantry but feeds so many people that the more people they can have to stock shelves the better.

8. For many community partners it seems as though there are not enough hours in the day, which can cause communication with outside institutions/organizations to be slow or sporadic. For this project we did not have very much time to coordinate with Open Door. We actually did not get verification from Open Door until the day the before the project was to take place. Regardless of communication barriers, they were very welcoming and ready to put us to work when we arrive this afternoon.

After we had talked to Open Door yesterday we were unsure exactly what the students would be doing when we arrived there today. We were also unsure of how many students would actually attend since we had had poor attendance at our first service project. Due to these two factors, I was worried that this project would not be as successful as the first C2C service project was.

Thankfully, it was wonderful! The students were ready and willing to work, with 87.5% attendance. They were having great conversations, working together and smiling! When they finished one project they were looking for something else to do! It was truly marvelous to see.

At the end of the service project the students had an opportunity to learn more about the food pantry by a volunteer that has been working there since the pantry opened many moons ago. Her story was really touching. They also learned where the pantry gets its food and funding from. A few students even asked questions and at least 2 asked for information on how to volunteer in the future!

All in all, I was very pleased with the turn out and work done by the class! It was a great day for Connect2Complete at Miami Hamilton.

Here are some pictures!