Tuesday: Community Harvest

No teacher, who works a traditional school year schedule, wants to hear this but I have some news: school starts up in less than a month. If you don't want to be reminded of this I suggest you stop hear and go watch Youtube videos of kittens chasing laser pointers.

As for anyone else...

Any teachers or parents of young children living in poverty can rest easy tonight knowing my class did its part on Tuesday to help fight hunger in the city of Fort Wayne. The Community Food Harvest is currently working on a program they call "Pack the Backpack." The "backpack" I am speaking of is actually a paper grocery bag, it contains exactly 10 pounds of groceries, the groceries are chosen to include foods from each food group, and the students receive a backpack every week they are in school.

The backpacks we packed included:

• 1 box of Mac'n'Cheese
• 2 bags of freeze-dried rice and beans
• 2 cans of fruit
• 2 cans of vegetables
• 4 containers of instant oatmeal
• 1 water bottle
• 2 cans of beans/canned meat
• 4 juice boxes

To make the packing process as efficient as possible each person in the group was held responsible for packing one of the categories listed above. We started out with an empty paper sack, one person placed their grocery item in the bag and then passed it to the next person until the bag was complete. The process worked great because it helped the trainees understand why it is imperative to pay close attention to what you are in doing. An example is in this case if someone hadn't paid attention they may have accidentally shorted a child's backpack of one of the items. The trainees C.L.A. training also came into play when we had to consider how many "backpacks" could be loaded onto a cart before it was considered unsafe. 

The trainees overall enjoyed the the work and it meant a lot to them that kids living in poverty would benefit from the work they put in on Tuesday. On a personal note I think this job also meant a lot to the trainees because of few them could relate to the need to ration food for the sake of not running out before the next designated grocery day. All of this is a reminder for why this class can make such a difference for the trainees, learning the soft skills and functional literacy skills taught in this program can hopefully help some of the trainees obtain better employment opportunities.