Volunteering - MAC & NAPS

Volunteering
I volunteered for 4 hours yesterday at The Second Harvest Food Bank. Most people know that the food bank distributes food to the food banks in our area. A service is provided by them that I don’t believe everyone knows about. Two programs, MAC and NAPS, are administered by them. I have written a post below explaining what these programs are. MAC stands for “Mothers and Children” and NAPS stands for “Assistance Program for Seniors”.

Yesterday I was one of the volunteers that helped to pack boxes for these two programs. These boxes are packed once a month by volunteers. Some of the people are there to help every month, some come on the months they are able. Yesterday the staff person in charge, Sandy, was afraid that there would not be enough volunteers, as she had only 9 that Rsvp’d, so she set up some volunteers to work on Wednesday evening, and a student group from Merritt Creek Academy to come yesterday afternoon. As it turned out, close to 20 showed up, so instead of working 4 hours, the amount of boxes to be packed that she planned for, were finished in 1 ½ hours. Since I had already registered 4 hours on my time sheet for “Community Service” at my job, I asked if there was anything else I could help with. I finished my 4 hours by doing filing in the office.

This was my first experience at helping pack the boxes for NAPS and MAC. It was fun. My job was to break down the cardboard boxes that contained the cans that those packing the boxes were finished with. After breaking down the boxes, they were put into a huge box to be hauled off for recycling. The guy directly across from me that was packing made lots of jokes that made our work more fun, he teased about them throwing the boxes at me, I said that was fine, just please don’t hit me in the head with them! It turns out, after we were finished and having some donuts and coffee, that I realized this man lived on the street behind us, and our back yards face each other! I told him “I thought you looked familiar!” I haven’t seen him since they first bought their house there. He told me they have lived there 15 years! Wow… where does the time go? One of the women on the assembly line packing was a friend from our church. I worked with a nurse from St. Luke’s breaking the boxes, and then she was sent over to tape up the boxes. It was the first time she had volunteered also. She works the 3 – 11 shift at the hospital. I found out several of them worked a 3 – 11 shift. One of the men asked me after, if I ever volunteered at the Daminio Center, I told him no. He told me that help is desperately needed there, especially in their soup kitchen and gave me the name of the person to call. I told him I would pass that need on.

If you have some spare time to volunteer, please consider the Second Harvest Food Bank or the Daminio Soup Kitchen. CHUM Drop in Center run by CHUM (Churches United in Ministry) is also a place that looks for volunteers. There are many opportunities in our community for those that want to serve.