Yesterday I volunteered at the City Rescue Mission, dating and sorting canned goods. The City Rescue Mission serves about 150 meals to people each evening. Some of those individuals are at the women and children’s location, so those meals are prepared with the others at the East Michigan location and then transported in “hot boxes” to their center. They also serve breakfast and lunch, which requires a smaller number of meals because some folks are off on their days’ plans, looking for a job, etc. They plan healthy and interesting meals using volunteered goods – what a lot of work!

The fun thing about volunteering there was the staff person and other volunteers with whom I worked. Two senior gentlemen were helping as well as a mom and her two middle school aged boys. They were typical young boys, and mom kept right on them but we also helped each other, laughed and had a good time. Amazingly, we accomplished quite a bit of marking dates on donated food and sorting it by type. What a lesson that mom is teaching her sons!

I learned that, when possible, larger cans or boxes of non-perishable items are helpful because of all the opening and disposing of containers and having enough of different items. In the future, I probably won’t be donating some weird can of goods that I picked up because it was on super sale!
– Pat, Volunteer Coordinator