Feed Hungry Families - Behind the Scenes Support of a Food Bank

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Help support hungry families by assisting the food bank in the warehouse. Each week the food bank distributes over 10,000 pounds of food to over 400 families though our grocery store and home delivery programs. At the White Center Food Bank, we serve over 6,000 individuals each month. Because of the pandemic, we are serving more people than ever before. In one day we saw 20 new families, which we typically see in a week. We are serving families again that we haven't seen in 7 years as people continue to face unemployment or a lack of childcare. Help us achieve our mission to minimize hunger while nourishing community, nurturing self-reliance and embracing our rich cultural diversity.

We serve families from all over the world, so we are constantly working to provide more culturally relevant foods, in the most culturally relevant ways. We are looking for volunteers to help us to sort food, stock shelves, assist with packing food for home delivery and our mobile pantries, assist with Grocery Rescue, and help staff keep the warehouse organized so we can efficiently distribute food to needy families.

We welcome anyone to volunteer, and it is a plus if you speak multiple languages (especially Vietnamese, Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish!).

We are specifically recruiting to build a pool of volunteers as described below:

• Monday, 10am-1:30pm, 1-3pm, or 1:30-5pm
• Tuesday, 10am-3pm (or a 2-4 hour shift within that) - note that this shift tends to have particularly heavy lifting as it's the day we receive all our food deliveries for the week!
• Wednesday, 9am-12:30pm, 11am-1pm, or 12:30-4pm
• Thursday, 9am-12:30pm, 11am-1pm, or 12:30-4pm
• Friday, 9am-12:30pm, 11am-1pm, or 12:30-4pm

Monday, Weds, Thurs and Friday Volunteer Tasks:
Morning volunteers will assist with setting up for distribution, may go out to assist with Grocery Rescue at local grocery stores, help receive Grocery Rescue, packing up for home delivery or mobile food pantries, and will assist with keeping the warehouse organized and the grocery store stocked during distribution.

Afternoon volunteers will assist with restocking the grocery store, sorting community donated items, packing for home delivery or mobile food pantries, and helping clean up when distribution concludes.

Tuesday Volunteer Tasks:
Assist in keeping the warehouse, fridges and freezers clean and organized, reorganize to prepare for the day's donation, restock the grocery store, receive and put away donations, assist in the baby pantry and bagging bulk dry goods.