Personal Narrative: Canned Food Drive

Neosho is a very involved community and lends a helping hand to those in need. Throughout our community, hunger has been an outstanding issue and several churches and organizations have risen to the challenge of meeting needs of those around. The Food Basket Brigade was started in 1988. Since its beginning, the effort has collected and distributed more than 4 million pounds of food. (The Joplin Globe). During the month before they deliver the food, several school organizations go out around town and pick up all the food from people who have it set out, usually by their mailboxes, and then they deliver it to The Newton County Armory. Back several years ago, when I was in school, one of our extra credit works was to participate with the

Let me back up and tell you I was the PTO president at the elementary school for over five years, my husband coached baseball, and my daughter did local plays and was always at the top of her class. So even though we had not asked anyone for help it came pouring in. I had a coworker who never got along with me, and she proceeded to go around this tiny town and tell people we were begging for money, one hundred percent not true. Other members of the community started getting upset and telling my family what she was saying, as you can imagine I was seeing red. Once again trying to be the bigger person, I let it roll down my back, I had bigger things to worry about. I took two months off work and thank goodness; the caner results came back negative and the talented Dr. Esters removed the tumor and there was donor bone put in, so she could continue to use her hip. I wrote a very long letter to the family of the donor explaining that she had been a cheerleader since she was four, loved singing and dancing, and that I would never be able to thank them for what they had

The Evangeline annual food drive is a good display of citizenship because of how they are attempting to raise more and more donations for the needy. One way in which the food drive shows good citizenship is through how they are trying to raise interest in the drive itself, and adding incentives for everyone to donate more food. For example, they now have it that if any person donates to the drive, they will get a ballot entered into a chance to win a $100 giftcard. Since the winter is coming, and more people will need food to make it through the cold, and they are needing more and more donations each year, they also added an incentive for parents to have their kids donate, and whichever class raises most gets a prize. Another reason why the

Continually, my father would come home from work weaker and disable sometimes he could barely stand up. He started getting blurry purple spots on him and that's when I figured something wasn't the same about my father. He used to always carry himself with energy and laughter but, now he couldn’t get out of bed. We took him to the hospital and they told us he had stage 2 cancer. This experience has not only changed me as a person but changed the way I had to live for a while. When my father had to be on around the clock care at the hospital me and my older sister had to help out around the house. While most 4th graders were outside playing with their friends, I was inside everyday helping my mom cook, clean, and feed the dogs. I had to step up a lot and do more thing that i'm not used to because my dad wasn't around to help us out. We would go up to the hospital about every other night and stay up there and spend the night watching over my dad at night. My dad’s cancer taught me that life is too short to be wasting my time on the little things that aren't even important! I’ve realized l I need to make every minute and every moment

Brisk fall air was wrapped around us as we inhaled the faint smell of musk in the fairly large warehouse building. Around us was rows and rows of grocery store products all organized in categories such as pasta, tomato products, and fruits. Our job here was to take boxes and carts full of food and stock the shelves. These donations came from community members that did local food drives for the Food Bank… This was four very long years ago. I was a freshman and was a member of the Business Professionals of America which is an organization based off of business and technology, but is enormously involved within the community and is consistently doing work with different community services. In BPA one of the first community service projects I was involved with was the Food Bank as described at the beginning. My fellow members and I worked multiple hours at the Milford Food Bank and held numerous food drives to donate to them. We also volunteered at different events they held and met some of the people that depend on the Food Bank to survive. We listened to these people’s

I first started working at the Hope Food Pantry during the Summer. I was working at Dordt over the summer and I was looking for service opportunities. That was where I met Marianne and first heard her story of why she and her bible study started the food pantry. I knew that it was something that I wanted to be involved with. Back in Wisconsin, I had been involved in a lot of different service projects through my church and school. Honestly, it was my mother who constantly was signing me up for things to do. It was hard for me to find places to serve when I got to Dordt. I was no longer getting signed up for things or being asked to help. I couldn’t be passive anymore.

There are many ways to help improve our community. Sometimes it takes one person to start but it takes a community to make it all work. We can start a food pantry or a blood drive for our community. This would help in so many ways.

‘FoodSHARE’ is a cooperative of multiple faith-based churches and businesses partnering together, in which the items are organized and hand delivered. Over 100 tons of food and much-needed supplies were distributed to those in need. As well as organizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers over the course of 7+ years Michelle, along with her core team of 8 senior volunteers, made regular visits to under-resourced children and their families…in their homes. Today ‘FoodSHARE’ collects canned goods and other sundry items to be donated to local Food Banks throughout South Florida and

He has fought for his life, and came close to losing it many times. My whole family has been affected by this adversity, including him. I’ve cried myself to sleep thinking about losing him. I’m not really sure what we would do without him. He picks me up if i’m sick, or he gives me a ride home from church, or to soccer practice. He takes me fishing, hunting, and when it snows he sits out back behind his shop and watches his grandchildren sled. He offers to let us spend the night, we stay up half the night watching movies and eating popcorn. My grandpa can’t come to all the outdoor activities. He’s limited to his outside time and ability. He’s limited to the amount of farm time or sitting on the beach watching us play in the sand. If someone is sick in the family they can’t go around him because he has a weak immune system. He also has to cope with his mother’s health getting worse and there's nothing he can do about it. He has to live with her barely remembering his name, or always telling him that she wants to go home. He has to live with her falling and injuring herself. There are a few things cancer hasn't changed in his life. He goes fishing every Wednesday and Friday. He goes and see his mother every Sunday, and Thursday. He comes to almost all of his grandchildrens games. He cooks, stays up with us, helps us with our homework, teaches us how to play golf, makes cheesy jokes even if he feels sick. I hope my grandpa makes it through all four grandkids graduation. I hope he’s able to see us seeceed in life. I hope he beats cancer and lives to tell his story to his great grandchildren(if any of us have any). I hope he continues to fight his hardest, and be brave and always put on a happy face. I hope he lives to prove that if you have God nothing is against you. Life may be rough but with strength, family, and God you can get through adversity. I teared up writing this and i’m sure anyone who had to write about something

A few people shuffled uncomfortably in their seats, someone looked around to see the state of courage in the room, and my heart skipped a beat. Before I even realized it myself, my hand rose up to volunteer as committee chair of the canned food drive for Key Club. This was it; this was me going from helper to bigger helper. Learning from my past canned food drive, I wanted to do more and knew the importance of each and everyone’s help. Three long weeks later, on a chilly autumn afternoon, a few awkward high-school girls and boys were standing by the automatic opening and closing doors of Safeway. We handed passersby flyers with a list of non-perishables they could donate to our cause. I remember feeling nervous at the thought of approaching

I worked with the temples staff and organized a weekly soup kitchen to feed the less fortunate people around the area of South San Francisco and San Bruno. My tasks entailed washing dished, cleaning the mandir is there were enough people to help with the soup kitchen. Also serving food, cleaning the murtis, making the food and also going to help buy groceries to prepare the food, if needed. I volunteer at the mandir on the weekends along with my sister and my parents. This activity allows me to not only spend time with my family, but also give back to my community by preparing and serving food to the less fortunate. Additionally, in order to raise funds for the soup kitchen, as we say in hindi langar, I meet with the fundraising committee as

Much like Will Allen, it only takes one person to begin to make a change. As the word spread about these few high school students really making a change, more than just the school community got involved. What once was an idea turned into a little grocery store in the middle of a high school, and even better, it was free. Throughout the state of Minnesota, food pantries have been popping up in high schools everywhere. As more information is given and this becomes more popular, these high school food pantries really could be found all over the country and maybe one day all around the world. One little reaction really can cause a chain reaction that will never

Louis Area Council has collected more than 50 million cans of food during the 30-year history of the drive … The Foodbank distributes the canned goods to more than 500 area food pantries” (Deickman, Christie). 2 million cans of food were collected in just this area, a powerful number that would not be possible without the generosity of the people in our communities. Every year, on a chilly Saturday morning, millions of Scouts rush from door to door, tying small blue bags on each doorknob as they go. All they ask in return is that those bags are filled with all the non-perishable food items the residents are willing to give. The Scouts even come to pick these bags up the next Saturday morning to take to local food banks, where the food is distributed to those in need in time for the holidays. Giving even one can would mean so much not only to the Scouts who worked so hard to make sure this happened successfully, but also to the people who need it so badly. One might even consider helping raise awareness by posting on social media sites about it, contacting local news channels and requesting more coverage on it, or even just telling your

Sometime in the year of 2015, my father was hospitalized, putting my family and I under many stresses, grief, and emotional drainage. On top of that, my friends were beginning to argue and split off, something that I am not new to. However, I pushed through it, and offered help wherever I could, whether it’d be walking myself to school rather than depending on someone to drive me, or offering to sacrifice my summer plans in order to take care of my father, or to give love and support to my friends and family, especially when they need it the most. It did not matter to me that I was not taking as much care of myself; I refused to let anyone go through such a difficult time alone, something I used to wish someone would have done for me. Some people

From what Kristen had read she realized that she had to get off of processed foods. She went to raw for a year. She ate what she had grew in her apartment (sprouts) or bought organic from a local health food store. She needed raw enzymes that would provide nutrition and would be easy for the body to assimilate. She bought a Norwalk juicer and juiced vegetables everyday, Kristen grew her own wheatgrass and drank a few ounces every day. She knew that he had to exercise, if she decided not to exercise she would keep getting sick. There was a pool in the complex and had had a friend of her’s watch her swim just in case of a heart attack. She would swim gently for about 20 minutes then go back to bed. Or take short walks down the block. It did a