On Monday (11/16) and Wednesday (11/18), I volunteered at New Orleans's Second Harvest Food Bank. Second Harvest food bank feeds communities in 23 parishes across all of southern Louisiana. The organization distributes 32 million meals annually and has been distributing even more food since the pandemic began. I was interested in volunteering with Second Harvest because I want to help people struggling with food insecurity. When I was a teacher, I saw firsthand the effects that food insecurity had on some of my students. This motivated me to want to help fight hunger. To be frank, I was expecting my time at the food bank to be quite boring and monotonous. I thought that I would struggle to stay awake while mindlessly filling boxes of food. To my surprise, the work was incredibly thought-provoking. As I scooped pasta onto tray after tray, I kept imagining each meal's recipient. I wondered if a tray would make its way to a young child or a septuagenarian. Envisioning a ...
