On Wednesday my group and I visited Food Bank for New York City’s community kitchen. For such a small facility they do many things including running a full meal and activity plan for seniors,a free community dinner daily and running a food panty. What is so special about the food panty is that every person who comes gets to pick out their own food. The space is set up like a mini grocery store.

The food panty is entirely run by volunteers, but before we were able to start there was a complicated system that we needed to learn. The food panty supplies people with nine balanced meals a month for each member of a family. Every person going through the panty is allotted a certain number of points per category (grains, caned vegetables, protein, fruit, ect.) My group was assigned to work the grain section of food party. At first we thought this would be simple but we quickly realized that we needed to understand a lot of things before we could effectively help people. There were many rules that sometimes were hard for people getting food to understand. Some people would come with 30 points for gains. This allowed them 10 items but you were not allowed to take any more than three of one thing. Once we caught on it became easier but we quickly realized that understanding the system wasn’t the only challenge. Many people only spoke Spanish and we realized that English was not going to be an effective way to communicate. As a group we needed to figure out how to work around this, so when we greeted people Tibeau and I worked with those who spoke Spanish and Sophie helped the people she could communicate with in English. As thirteen-year-olds we also faced the problem how how to respectfully explain to adults what they could and could not take. Some people wanted to take more than their share or take too many of one item and we needed be respectful while still making sure they received their share of the food. At the end of the day I think that my entire group felt really accomplished. Leaving the pantry you knew that you had actually helped people and that the food they received was really going to make a difference in their month.