Reporter recounts rewarding experience from participating in Day of Service
Day of Service is UHCL’s annual event in which students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members give back to the community through service. This year was the first time that I participated in the school-wide event so I was (somewhat) excited.
I was assigned to volunteer at the Galveston County Food Bank, and I immediately assumed that I would be stacking canned goods, sorting boxes of cereal, and other things along those lines. This was NOT the case.
When my volunteer group and I arrived at the food bank, the director explained that in addition to accepting donations of various food items, they drove around and collected all the frozen meat from local supermarkets that were about to be thrown away based on the in-store expiration date. Because the meat was frozen, it could last well past the expiration date on the packaging, effectively feeding families who needed it the most. The director then set us up at two tables and set up an assembly line to package the frozen meats to be shipped out to communities in need.
The first table opened all the boxes and made sure that all the meat was in good shape (packaging in good repair, frozen, not freezer burned, etc.), and the second table took the meat in good repair and separated them into three categories: Feather, Hoof, and TNT. The feather category included meat coming from any animal with feathers, the hoof category included meat coming from any animal that had hooves, and the TNT category included any meat that was from an animal’s tongue, neck, or stomach.
At first, everybody was shocked because nobody thought that we would be doing anything along the lines of handling meat, but then we all jumped into it to get the job done. We knew we only had a few hours to get as much work done as we could, so two volunteers migrated between tables to serve as facilitators that made sure that everything ran smoothly.
When we finished, I looked around at all the work we had done and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment. We had come together to help people we didn’t even know (and would probably never meet), and that’s something to be proud about.
The purpose of UHCL’s Day of Service is to provide an outlet for students and faculty to volunteer in the community and develop a passion for servant leadership. The experience I had was very rewarding and I would definitely urge anyone and everyone to participate in it next year!
