My first event

My first event was on Saturday 10/15/2011: Pantry in Rauschenbush  Metro Ministries  from 10am to 12:30pm.  

Philippe, Wildna. Label of volunteer’s name 

of New York Cares.October 25, 2011.

When I arrived there, I can see some homeless person on the stairs, waiting for  11am: the beginning of the food distribution. The church had 3 red doors, for the Pantry I had to ring the bell of the second one.. So from the outside, people already have a hot welcome. So I rang the bell and someone came to open, here all the volunteers had to go upstairs in the “volunteer’s room” where the hot coffee smell,  I call it like that because we could put our coat and bag on the wood coat rack placed at the center of the room. Attendance sheet, labels and pens were placed on a table stick to the white wall, we had to sign,take a label, write our name and stick it on our clothe. Then, we could serve ourselves a cup of coffee or tea.. We had the opportunity to take a tea or a coffee before to start.




 We were approximately 20 volunteers from different ethnicities (Chinese, black, white...) I also could  recognize 4 french people who were talking  each other.Then, we had to prepare the distribution room downstairs. 
I would say it’s a big warm, well illuminates basement under the church.By looking the beige painted scaled walls, I could guess that it was pretty old. When we walked, our shoes made a lot of noise on the grey  pavements of stone floor. There were two halls: one at the right and one at the left of the big room. The right hall leaded to men’s restrooms and left halls leaded to ladies’ restrooms.
Restrooms weren’t very maintained, I expected that a place that welcome many homeless person have well maintained bathrooms.


But anyway, the work had to be done. We had to come back to the main room (distribution room) and install the tables which were folded, we had to place them by creating a rectangle arrangement  by living space between them. Then, we had to bring different food articles that were in the stocks behind the distribution room. There was a long hall that gave access to two rooms: both of them were part of the stock.There were many shelves where boxes containing the food, were put on. 
So we had to create chains and pass all the boxes to the other person until they arrived at the distribution room. It was interesting to see the force of unity that existed between volunteers to achieve a work due. Where did this force from? They didn’t know each other, they all had different cultures, different social classes, but they still collaborated together. Where did this desire to help others from? There we had to place everything, take the food out of boxes, put some of them on tables and let some in boxes behind the tables. Each table had its type of food: cereals,,vegetables, cans, dairy...Each product  was equal to a number of points5 I will explained that later). Close to this big room; you had at the right restroom for women  and at left side those for men.


Then Tom called us to go upstairs.Tom was a young man, responsible from the Baptist church.
 And Steve is the team leader from New York cares. When we arrived upstairs, Tom explained to us what we were going to do  and how we were going to proceed.Because people out there were doing some construction work, it was very noisy so when Tom was explaining to us how the work had to be done, it was disturbing.Fortunately  the church had a structure of Catholic church, so there was some echo, we can still hear what Tom was saying.We had to create groups of 2 or 3 people, and each was responsible of a type of food. Some of the volunteer were charged to open the door upstairs and welcome people one by one, made them seated in the big room. One by one, people had to sign up via Tom and Steve on the computers. According to how many people were living in the household, they had the right to a certain amount of point for each type of food. For example, in face of dairy, if there was 1 point, I had to give a product that is equal to 1 point. We quickly found out that on the sheet of dairies, products that we really had to distribute weren’t those on the sheet,they were smaller.  After ask to Tom we fond out that 3 nanny -goat of milk or 1 bag of powder milk , were equal to 1 point. I was responsible to the dairy distribution with Rachel. Rachel was a young lady from Toronto, with Chinese origin. This Pantry was not her 1st event, she also volunteered with children.


It was interesting and surprising to see that a lot of people who received this aid from church, were not necessary homeless persons, they were as dressed and cleaned as us, some of them looked as good as we did they were some type of person that we would see or meet everyday on the subway or in the street, and we would never think that they live in a poor situation. You can see someone cleaned, wearing good clothes but who may live in a poor situation and depend in generosity of those organization A lot of them were very thankful to us and showed their appreciation. This first event as a volunteer gave me back the feeling to be useful.