6 a.m. Friday, August 14
Rey Fuentes and Sergio Cervantes arrive at work; Rey to open up the
warehouse, Sergio to take the truck and begin his round of food harvesting from local grocery stories and food warehouses.
7:30 a.m. A team of 10 volunteers and Mike Kuhn arrive at the farm of Mike Kenyon to harvest sweetcorn that he has planted for us to harvest for our guests. About 1800 ears are picked!
7:30 a.m. At the same time, our Board of Directors meets via zoom to discuss long-term issues with board membership, this year’s goals, and resolve some issues that have dogged us for a long time. We
celebrate the work of Board member Marilou Pilman, who has recruited $150,000 in publicity for our Chip in for Hunger and a raffle for a 7-day vacation by Apple Vacations. Wow!
9:30 a.m. The Board meeting is over, and the warehouse staff is loading up 21 boxes of food to go to Gardiner Place in East Dundee.
A shipment of milk arrives and is unpacked.
Sergio has returned from one pick up and has left for another.
10:00 a.m. Sergio is off to Willow Creek Care Center to pick up two or three pallets of food that Willow Creek had too much of, and local food pantries here needed. We picked it up, and the local pantries came here to get what they needed. It’s a gentle way of helping their work.
11:00 a.m. Some donations arrive: a whole lot of adult diapers, the produce from a family’s garden.
11:30 a.m. 31 households, with 92 people in those households, have arrived for our still new seniors-only food distribution.
1:00 p.m. Staff from Senior Services Associates have set up for 45 drivers to pick up food from our parking lot to deliver to 117 homebound seniors.
1:00 p.m. Our volunteers deliver food to 13 local families, who, for medical reasons, can’t go to stores or come to our distribution.
2:00 p.m. A woman arrives who has been told by a partner agency that for her needs, she really needs to come to us for the food for her 6 member family. We fill a cart.
The warehouse crew goes to work, moving stock, cleaning the floors. Volunteers come to do a proper clean of the front hallways so our building will be clean when Monday arrives.
In between, a lead for a new grant is discovered and pursued, a change list is developed, an article written for our newsletter, and a bank deposit is made.
5:00 p.m. After serving 183 families and stocking six local food pantries with meat, we begin to prepare for the new week.
TGIF.
Thank you for making this possible!