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| - Fun, fast paced, energetic! My type of volunteer work. Like so many people I was able to join my daughters school volleyball team, other schools, work groups and individual volunteers. I'd seen the place, heard about it before but had never participated in volunteer work here. We were scheduled for 3:30 and they herd the masses quickly and got started by 3:30. All I knew we were boxing food at this point. Once we were all sat the group leader or right into explaining what FMSC was about and their mission. There are 2 types of donations you can do. Monetary and Physical Labor. We were there for the physical labor part. This I was interested in as many a time, too much help or bodies can create inefficiency in production line work, not the case here. The leader clearly explained everyone's roles for the shift and you have 6 options.
1. Material scooper- Keeping rice and soy bins full.
2. Box Assembly- Get boxes ready for packing.
3. Assembly Line Worker- Packing food.
4. Warehouse Worker- Delivery and Moving everything
5. Packer- weighing, taping, stocking finish product once all boxed.
I had missed my opportunity to hit the gym for the day so Warehouse Worker (runner) peaked my interest. This I will tell you. I never stopped moving the entire 1.5 hours and by the end of our shift I was a sweaty mess. I was more upset as I forgot my Fitbit at the house and wanted to see how many steps I actually did in that time period.
Once the process starts, you have already been debriefed on your roles and it's go time. They play music and break groups into their own teams which creates competition. The goal is to safely and productively pack as many boxes as possible in the shift. Teams are singing, screaming for materials, bragging about loaded box counts and it's fun.
Overall you end up feeling good about helping and getting the final feedback what the entire group effort was able to contribute to FMSC goal.
That day we ended up making 195 boxes = 42,120 meals = feeding 115 children for a year. So you can't leave without feeling awesome.
Besides the labor volunteerism this group also needs monetary donations to purchase the food and material we used to box. I got the sense these people truly believe in the humanitarian aid they are providing and look forward to donating money or labor in the near future.
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