Service Night at Second Harvest

As one of the nation’s largest food banks, Second Harvest Heartland is a leader in the emergency food chain. However, their work is so much more than just moving food. The Brooklyn Park location which 15 of us volunteered on October 21 is one of the main distributors of food for many of the food shelves in the twin cities and greater Minnesota area. Our time at Second Harvest was twofold, volunteering and getting food ready to be distributed to food banks and education.

Every time you volunteer at Second Harvest, what you do changed. During our volunteer time our group prepared two different things. Some in our helped pack CSFP boxes. CSFP stand for Commodity Supplemental Food Program but is also known as the Senior Food Box. Theses boxes provide low-income seniors with a free monthly package filled with nutritious self-stable food. Others in our group had to job of sorting through bread. For many of the perishable food that goes through Second Harvest is donated by corporations, brands, and growers. When it comes to perishable food it needs to be sorted through for mold and expiration. That was the first step for the bread as well. After it was confirmed the bread was safe to eat, the loaves were sorted into boxes of sliced and miscellaneous bread. Sliced bread consists of anything that you could make a sandwich out of. Miscellaneous bread consists of things like bagels, hot dog buns, or pastries. In order to minimize food waste, any of the moldy or expired food goes to a local farm to feed animals or be used as compost.

Throughout our 2 hour long volunteering session our group along with all the other 24 volunteers packed 132 boxes of bread and 202 CSFP boxes. Overall, that is equivalent to 8,716 pounds of food. They figure 1.2 pounds of food is equivalent to 1 meal. Meaning our group packed 7,263 meals, which is equivalent to 191 meals packed per volunteer!

The second aspect of our volunteers consisted of education. We learned that 1 in 5 households are food insecure. Food insecurity means that one flat tired, medical bill, or unexpected payment away from not being able to afford food. With the cost of living increasing, the number of people that a food insecure is also increasing. Second Harvest is working to help end food insecurity. However, they also encourage people to fight hunger at its source. The advocate for change at a federal level. At the end of our sessions they encouraged all voting aged volunteers to do research on their local and state level politicians and vote for those advocating for policy changes for people affected by food insecurity.