GBP students and teachers help out at the Greater Boston Food Bank. (Photos by Ms. Tincher) Michaella Callahan, GBP Student
A huge aspect of GBP is learning ways to help make the community better. Last week our class took a field trip to the Greater Boston Food Bank. It was a great experience to be able to see what goes on behind the scenes at the food bank and assist in the process of it. Prior to the trip, we did an in class preparation activity looking at statistics of people affected by hunger in Massachusetts. In this activity we found that last year the Food Bank collected enough food to feed approximately 54,000 people. They are able to make that possible with the help of over 25,000 volunteers. The company is working to increase the distribution of food in order to provide at least one meal a day for everyone in need in the eastern Massachusetts area. When we arrived to the food bank we walked through a huge room with food stacked to the ceiling. It was surprising how much food this company is able to collect for people in need. After a brief introduction to the GBFB, the workers took us into the room where the food is organized and assigned us different roles. The different roles were re-stocking boxes, unloading the food onto the conveyor belt, separating the food into categories, weighing the boxes, and loading the filled boxes onto a forklift. It was really hectic organizing the food because it was consistently passing by on the conveyor belt and we had to be able to separate it into the correct categories. We also had to be sure there were no opened packages and no expired food. However the hard work was worth it because of the reward of helping others. Afterwards we had a quick debrief and learned that we had packaged about 8,000 pounds of food (which, we found out, was more than the students in the Period 5&6 class!). Competition aside, it was shocking to learn that we packed that much food in a short amount of time, and goes to show how much can be accomplished when you have a group working cohesively to solve a problem. This field trip allowed us as GBP students to immerse ourselves in a situation similar to the CAP that we will be completing over the course of the next few months. The lesson of this field trip relating to our CAP is that one person can make a huge difference. The Greater Boston Food Bank started with one person handing out food from the back of their truck and expanded into a huge company with the help of donations, drives, and financial contributions. The hopes of our CAP project is that we can start something that others will be able to expand upon in the future in order to help the community. It was a rewarding feeling to be able to help those in need and knowing that we were making a change. Leave a Reply. |
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May 2016
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