The Oregon Food Bank

Since moving to Aloha, I have found that I have a fair amount of free time and no friends nearby.  To combat both of these issues, one of my thoughts was that I could volunteer somewhere.  I searched on Craigslist for awhile with no great opportunities popping out at me, but this past Saturday I somehow ran across the possibility of volunteering at OFB.  The Beaverton warehouse is about three miles away, so I signed up for a couple of hours today, and I ended up packing a bunch of frozen carrots into family-sized (3 pounds) packages for distribution.  I met a few nice ladies, and we ended up working with a group of students from a high school.  It turned out that in about an hour and a half or so, we prepared about 5,000 pounds of food for distribution which is a lot of food.  I really enjoyed doing this, and when I got home, I signed up for a few more shifts in the coming weeks.

For those of you who don't know much about this organization, it is a private non-profit that does a lot of work to try to prevent Oregonians from going hungry.  OFB is centered in Portland, but, if I remember correctly, the central Portland warehouse works with/feeds into 20 other warehouses across the state, and each of these warehouses works with smaller agencies that actually do the food distribution or cook the food for people to eat (like soup kitchens).  Even better, OFB is genuinely interested in helping prevent hunger, so they run free classes that teach people how to make good food choices to stretch their food dollars farther, how to cook inexpensive and nutritious meals, and how to grow gardens to produce their own food.  A couple blocks from the warehouse that I was working in was a garden that OFB runs, and they use this garden to teach people, and they also use it to create produce (5,000 pounds this year so far as of a few weeks ago) for the food bank.  Additionally, OFB advocates at a legislative level to speak for the hungry and poor in our state.

I really like the idea of doing something to help people be able to feed their families.  I think Jesus had compassion for the hungry, and I want to share in His vision for a world where people are not in need.  It would be very cool if we could all reach out to the people around us who are in need and spread our resources that way, but that is clearly not working, and I think that from my research and experience so far at OFB, it is a great (and perhaps efficient) way to reach out to people in need.  I maybe handled 100-200 bags of carrots today, so I feel like I'm now involved in that many people's lives.

Apparently Oregon is the "second hungriest" state, following Mississippi, I believe, in the nation right now.  The people in our state have been hit very hard by our economy, and OFB is distributing record numbers of emergency food boxes.  From the OFB website, "As a result of growing levels of long-term unemployment, 260,000 people per month eat meals from emergency food boxes. Of those, 85,800 are children. For the first time ever, Oregon Food Bank distributed more than 1 million emergency food boxes in fiscal year 2010-11."  People are hungry!

If you are interested in working with OFB, visit their website.  If you want to find your regional center, you can find that here.  You can also dig around a bit to find local agencies to work with if you want to be a part of actually distributing the food to people.  Of course, OFB takes donations, too.  They accept food donations, and if you find your region's food center, you should be able to either find a list of drop-off sites on their website, or you will be able to find a number to call to ask for this information!  If you want to get more food for your dollar, I'd recommend donating money directly to OFB.  By using their connections and by buying bulk, they can get four pounds of food for a dollar, and that's just impressive.
I think that's all I can think of to say for now, but please let me know if you have any questions!