The Houston Food Bank

The term service-learning means involving students in community service activities and applies the experience to personal and academic development. Volunteering is any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment or someone other than, or in addition to, close relatives. Community service are services volunteered by individuals or an organization to benefit a community or institutions. Service learning is when the focus is learning and service becoming second. For example attending the Houston Food Bank through the University of Houston Downtown is a service-learning. The students are able to learn from the experience and are able to use it in real life scenarios. Community services goals

The Houston Food Bank receives food from various places such as grocery stores, and wholesalers. 87% of the food is distributed to food pantries, 3% are backpack buddies and kid’s café, 8% to soup kitchens and meal sites and 2% is non-traditional. A total of 50,000,000 nutritious meals are distributed. The Houston Food Bank receives 73,000,000 pounds of food. They received this food from various places, 19% from USDA, 21% from local companies, 4% from food drives, 44% from feeding America donors, 6% from affiliates, and 6% is purchased. The mission of the Houston Food Bank is “Leading the fight against hunger”. Their vision is “Food access for all”. The Houston Food Bank has 2 locations, the main location is the warehouse located in Portwall St. and the Keegan Kitchen located north of downtown. The Portwall facility accommodates volunteers and staff to distribute food to the communities. It is also used as food bank staff offices and community services ranging from nutrition education to assistance with food stamp

In the group that I was assigned we were responsible to assemble backpacks. The backpacks will be distributed to children in schools. We were showed the right way to assemble the backpacks, and were each food had to be placed. Backpacks had to be neatly order and when tying the bags we had to make sure that the majority of the air was out so they wouldn’t get messed up. The tying of the backpacks had a specific way, we had to tie them really tight so they wouldn’t become loose and loose the order of how the foods were placed. The making of the backpacks will start from the beginning of the assembly line. We had to fill bags in a specific way with cereal, milk, juice, cans of various food and fruit and snacks. We had to make sure that milk, and juice were in the middle of the bag because they are the most delicate out of the rest of the food. If milk and juice would happen to be on the side of the bags they could easily go bad or get crushed with the rest of the cans and spill, making a mess in the bag. I was at the end of the line, tying backpacks and making sure that they were really tight so they wouldn’t become loose once it was places in