On Saturday, October 26, I participated in Make a Difference Day at Stockton. We filled out some forms at a table in the campus center and shuffled into the event room where we figured out where we were going for the day. I was able to sign up to go to the food bank, so after speeches were made, I made my way to the yellow school bus with the rest of my group and the other groups that were leaving campus.
Once getting to the food bank, we had to leave our things in lockers and were put right to work, filling and packaging boxes of non-perishable food supplies for Thanksgiving. I was given a tape dispenser and was told to seal the boxes after they were examined for the contents. After sealing the box, a sticker marking that the box was from the food bank was to be put on the side of the box. Previously, I had never used a tape dispenser quite like the one they gave me, so I had a bit of trouble, but by lunchtime, I had it down. I also had trouble both taping the box and putting the sticker when the assembly line sped up, so the box examiner next to me put a bunch of stickers on the boxes to help.
After filling hundreds of boxes, we had our lunch break, but we were not down for long. We set back to work after finishing our meal. This time we ended up putting the boxes together to be filled. As it turned out, Stockton students are pretty adept and quick at constructing cardboard boxes. We kept piling the boxes up at a pace unrivalled by others. We quickly finished up putting together the boxes, and the boxes filled up steadily. After all was said and done, it was incredible to see how many pallets of boxes we put together for Thanksgiving.
Feeling good about ourselves, we boarded the bus to return to campus. It felt good to know that we were able to help people for the holidays. It also made me think about how many families are out there that need these boxes of food. I often tend to forget how many people are impoverished in our area and how many people live on minimum wage. It made me happy to accomplish filling hundreds of boxes, but saddened me that there was a need for hundreds of boxes. Overall, I really enjoyed this community service event and plan to participate next year, as well.