These are boxes of cereal that we packed to hand out to people
These are blue bags that had varieties of different types of canned food, which we helped pile onto the boxes of cereal.
Here is the pantry that John himself let us walk in and see what was there. We saw lots of canned foods and apple sauce.
Here is a closer photo of the apple sauce and diced fruit he had stored in the pantry, to later handout.
For our second field work we went to St. John’s Food Pantry. We got their as a group and met up with the leader of the program Joe Spicket. Joe Spicket is a man who has been running this food pantry for a long time and is someone who buys all the food for these people who come in to get food. He is the only person who gives out baby diapers and formula for babies in New York City, according to Joe.
Something that I thought was really interesting was that he offers any person who needs food from 16th street 64th street, river to river. I think it is amazing what he does for these families, in addition to helping host events for these people to come and enjoy. Something he does every year is he always gives a Thanksgiving meal for these people to take home to their families.
From going to this food pantry, I think my group’s goal was to be able to experience what it is like to get ready for more than a hundred people. What I mean by this is actually getting to do hands on work by packing food into bags and preparing for Wednesday, which is when Joe hands out the food to all the people who come. While I was packing the cereal and putting them into piles I was amazed by how many we did and how Joe has to get volunteers to do this every Tuesday to get ready for the crowd on Wednesday. I think this impacted me in the way that I really couldn’t imagine that more than two hundred people come to St. John’s food pantry to get food that should last them a week.
After we were done packaging the food,, we decided to ask Joe some questions about his job, and we learned some really interesting things. For example, I learned that every year there is this event that happens where a group of people from a store (when we went there were Ralph Lauren volunteers making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) making up 2,000 sandwiches. What usually happens is they give 200 to Joe to give to his people and the rest of them go to all different food pantries and food banks in NYC.
A question we asked Joe that I thought was really interesting was, “How do you pay for all the food that you get?” To summarize what he told us was he gets money from strangers who are donating money to him. Also he has this person who helps him find good deals on food and they tell Joe and Joe gets in contact with that particular company. While we were there he also told us that he never knows were the money comes from, all he knows is it is from people who donate to him. Something I might want to remember is what he told us about how he makes sure everyone gets an even amount of food and that everyone goes home happy. While I was there I felt really good at the end because I helped in someway to make a difference, even if it was really small difference.
