Service on Saturday - April 20th

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to serve with the Mid South Food Bank. While there were many areas in which they provide services, the service we completed on this particular day was to pack bags and fill boxes with menstrual products for women and girls. Located in a more poverty-stricken area of the Memphis Community, the core volunteers at Mid South Food Bank were more than ecstatic to have had so many volunteers and accomplish so many projects in one day. As a part of this service, we all worked in teams at our individual bins to pack as many bags as we could. As time went along, it was evident that working in pairs would be faster to supply all the bags with their respective contents. My partner was Jayla Kyle, and as two women packing menstrual supplies, it provided a gateway for enriching conversation about how much menstrual cycles affect a woman's life long-term and short-term. I think this service impacted me personally because I was able to witness just how much thought and time goes into making sure you have the right sizes and types of products, whether it be liner, pads or tampons. Trying to ensure each bag had a diverse array of contents to fit the needs of someone I've never met reassured me of the sense of compassion and care we can have for others, often not intentionally. Something else I took away from this service was working on my patience. Throughout the service, there were times when production got low or that we were receiving a high volume of bags from the other bin. This because frustrating as me and my partner often were trying to pay for attention to the types of product and size to ensure a patient got a wealthy array of products and our adjacent partner, who were of the male gender, were not necessarily knowledge on the impact a reduction in options can have at that time of the month. Nevertheless, still working to increase out speed, my partner and I both agreed to take little extra time to pack the bags, and that if we were receiving them, we would have been appreciative of someone taking a little more time to put that much thought into it.

It was very fun and fulfilling. I enjoyed being able to serve the community with this opportunity.

Moving mulch and wheel barrels was great exercise!! I mostly enjoyed how diverse the volunteers were. There were high schoolers partnered with the NAACP, one of them I used to work with. There were also college students with City Year Memphis and leaders from the Urban League. We worked hard, and it was very fulfilling work.

It was laid back and fun.