Fill Up America

For days I contemplated on what the subject matter would be for my 500^th Unilocal review. I narrowed the choices down to two then decided to use neither because this one simply fell into place.
During the holidays many people take time out of their busy schedules to volunteer to help those less fortunate than themselves. I was taught this lesson many years ago and have taken it a step further by volunteering my services to different organizations year round. I’m often asked how I’m able to volunteer as often as I do, and simply put, I think I’m able to do this because I work it into my schedule much like someone would incorporate an activity of leisure or hobby into theirs.
On Thanksgiving morning 2008, I signed up to help prepare a turkey feast for those in need. The name of the organization for which I was volunteering for is Fill Up America. Fill Up America is a 501.c.3 non-​profit organization based in San Francisco and completely volunteer-​run. In addition to providing free holiday meals during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays the main mission of Fill Up America is to obtain surplus food from local growers and markets to bag and redistribute to those in need. Every Friday morning volunteers gather at the OneTaste Urban Retreat Center on Folsom Street to help unload surplus food from pallets and then help to sort and bag the donated food. From literature I gathered at the site I learned that much of the surplus food comes from the San Francisco Food Bank, the San Francisco Produce Market and Trader Joe’s and is redistributed to families and individuals in the SOMA and Mission neighborhoods.
Going in I knew nothing of the organization, and I simply expected to help out in a kitchen or help to serve food. It turned out to be so much more than that. Being Thanksgiving morning they had a large force of volunteers on site to help out. After a quick overview by one of the volunteer coordinators we got to choose which immediate task we wanted to take part in. I chose to be part of the street team which headed out to specific target areas to stop and talk to the homeless and those who looked like they needed a meal and to inform them that we had a free hot Thanksgiving meal for them if they wished to attend.
Broken up into two person teams and armed with a handful of informational flyers I wasn’t sure what kind of reception we would encounter, but it turned out to be a very positive, worthwhile experience as we were greeted with smiles and gratitude from most of the people hanging out on street corners or just sitting on the sidewalks. Before I knew it we had run out of flyers.
Things were looking good at the meal site when we returned. With volunteers cooking at yet another site a half block away and the space being all cleaned up and swept the number of available tasks was pretty bare. As soon as one of the coordinators suggested help was needed cleaning up in the kitchen I jumped at the opportunity to get my hands dirty. As it turned out I was to get my hands quite clean by scrubbing and washing all the serving pans, pots and utensils. I had plenty of helpers to help me wipe and put things in order and amazingly enough we were ready to go about 45 minutes before the scheduled serving time.
Although the shift that I had signed up for ended I decided to stay longer to help serve the food. There were plenty of volunteers there, but I wasn’t about to do all that prep work just to walk away when the guests began to show up. I wanted to see how it all went down. Since one of the organizers had already asked me to prepare the sterno canisters, (I love playing with fire.) I simply grabbed an apron and a pair of gloves and jumped into the server line. I got to ladle gravy onto everyone’s turkey, potatoes and stuffing and just seeing all the happy faces and hearing all the gratitude made the entire morning so very worthwhile.
Fill Up America doesn’t have a permanent address. If you’re interested in volunteering simply call the number posted and ask for David.