Fourth-year Elaine Yao, one of our Committee members, kicks off the 2017-18 Frizzell Blog Series with a post describing her experience volunteering at the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Take a look!
In the vast brick-and-steel sprawl of Chicago, people – and the food that sustains their lives – are ferried between islands of habitation along vast networks of highways and trains. Particularly in the harsh winters, these passageways turn into divisions, forming the edges of the worlds we experience and participate in. Food arrives invisibly on supermarket shelves, trucked in from some of the massive wholesale warehouses that we only glimpse on the train between island-neighborhoods somewhere on the west side. Yet one of these warehouses is unlike the others: the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Cook County’s food bank, which commands a 268,000 square-foot warehouse on the southwest side of the city. Tucked under the I-55 and bordered by storage, auto, and manufacturing companies, it’s not exactly where you’d expect to find a pioneering model of charitable food redistribution. Nonetheless, it is the beating heart that circulates food donations to the city’s needy, stocks soup kitchens and pantries, trains unemployed adults for food service, and supplies fresh produce to food deserts and school cafeterias. During a cold snap in the midst of last December’s holiday season, I experienced firsthand the GCFD’s outstanding and quietly efficacious volunteer program.
Archer Heights isn’t an easy place to get to, particularly in the dead of winter. It’s only seven miles from the University of Chicago campus, but it’s at least an hour of bus rides across some of Chicago’s least visited neighborhoods. Despite the flurry of food drives organized by service-minded students and community members in Hyde Park, after the donations are sent away, they all but disappear from our view. Food donation is an act of trust as much as it is an act of charity: we have to believe that the organization gathering and distributing the food behind the scenes is as compassionate and effective as we want them to be. Being surrounded by some of the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, which have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes, only heightens this sense of urgency.
Photo Courtesy of the GCFD https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/map-statistics/
When I finally arrived at the GCFD’s warehouse one morning, I was immediately struck by how businesslike and well-planned the volunteer experience was. Most of the volunteers that day – at least a hundred – had come in large groups, sent by companies or schools. A quick orientation introduced us to the history and activities of the GCFD, and briefed us on the day’s tasks. When we entered a soaring warehouse space, as impressive as IKEA depot, the group divided. Half was assigned to packaging a massive shipment of fresh pears into distribution-ready boxes that would go all over the city. I was involved in receiving food donations. Volunteers are the first line of defense ensuring that donations meet quality and safety standards, and that they are then categorized appropriately. Donations consisted of everything from loose-leaf tea to gourmet grain mixes to the occasional decades-old cans of beans.
Bags full of packages and cans were upturned onto a long steel table. After checking that items were unopened and undamaged, we moved donations into specific-category crates (for example, rice and pasta, or canned soups and beans). Once the donations started flowing, the atmosphere became intense, full of concentrated activities as volunteers consulted a guide-sheet and each other for guidance on expiration dates, how to categorize ambiguous items – a couple dozen boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix presented my first challenge – and how to manage irregularly shaped boxes and bags. Though we had all been complete strangers an hour ago, volunteers quickly developed a sense of solidarity and teamwork, and were appreciative of each other’s personalities. As particularly massive amounts of donations began to pile up on the table, ad hoc production lines formed, passing cans from hand to hand with impressive rapidity. My organizational compulsions were noticed as I arranged layers of cans by height, leading someone to tease, “I bet that you organize a mean dishwasher.”
Photo Courtesy of the GCFD https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/map-statistics/
The holidays are the busiest time for the Depository: it’s when they receive the most donations and handle the largest groups of volunteers. The excitement and altruism of the season was definitely in the air. I was astonished by the sheer volume of food donations we handled that day, and struck by how important volunteers are to making the GCFD successful. The Depository needs all the help it can get to make sure that its fantastic ideas can be carried out. In fact, some of the most exciting volunteer opportunities are taking place all over the city. To combat food deserts at the source, the GCFD has a fleet of mobile pantries and produce markets that bring fresh, nutritious food straight to the people that need them most. Its “FRESH Trucks” take the idea of food as medicine seriously, providing produce to food-insecure health clinic patients who receive a “referral,” a prescription for fresh produce.
Volunteering at the GCFD was a limited window into the complexity of the supply chain that moves food into and through the city. The GCFD has to balance its roles as a food bank, an advocate for good policy, and a liaison between its national parent organization, Feeding America, and its local partners and agencies, who are on the ground directly interacting with the hungry and needy. One of the most heartening parts of the experience was recognizing the GCFD’s progressive outlook. Not content to coast on its current success and working model, the GCFD is constantly striving to come up with more innovative and practical solutions. In the vast grey swaths of an industrial manufacturing city, surrounded by industrial agriculture, it can be hard to imagine a sustainable food system that respects our environment and our neighbors. It’s easy to forget, but the simple act of eating is perhaps the most primal and elemental way we interact with our environment. The GCFD does tremendous day-to-day work to feed the hungry of today, but with an eye towards reshaping the foodways and food systems of the future to be more healthful, less wasteful, and ultimately supportive of all forms of life.
Interested in getting involved with the Greater Chicago Food Despository? Visit https://volunteers.chicagosfoodbank.org to sign up meal packing or FRESH Truck opportunities individually or as a group!