Volunteering with Food Lifeline

I recently went to Food Lifeline as part of the service learning program for my high school. Food Lifeline is a non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating food security in Western Washington. The organization distributes food to several food banks and other similar organizations, which then is able to provide over 200,000 meals a day!

The work I’ve done so far involves sorting a vast array of food items by category, and repacking them into bins that could get up to 40 pounds. I was quite new to volunteering in general—at first, I was quite nervous. I’m an introverted person overall, so working alongside several strangers seemed quite daunting to me. I was also rather worried that volunteering with Food Lifeline would be either too easy and boring or too difficult and stressful.

Thankfully, both of these first impressions were false! The staff was incredibly friendly; if I ever made a mistake like forgetting to throw away bad food or sorting food into the wrong categories, they kindly corrected me. Not only was the staff approachable, but the other volunteers there were as well! On my first day, there was a group of about 15-20 people, and they helped me a ton with separating lids and figuring out which foods went with which categories. And on my second day, there was a family that I was able to talk to to make the experience more enjoyable.

On top of the super benign community at Food Lifeline, I also simply loved the experience. Being at Food Lifeline was incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, particularly as I kept in the back of my mind the people I could potentially help through my service. I’m greatly looking forward to my future sessions with Food Lifeline!