Working At The Community Cafe

This last week, I branched out from my usual schedule at the food bank and instead worked at the Community Café. On Tuesday I worked to prepare some vegetable for one of the evening meals and on Thursday I worked a summer lunch program. Next week I will be working the evening meal at the Café. My experience this last week at the Community Café was very different from these last few weeks at the food bank. The café was organized and appeared to be well-staffed. I had to schedule my volunteer time as there was a waiting list of organizations, while at the food bank it is more of a come when you are available situation. I have enjoyed my time working at the café so far and I hope to work there more over the course of my Internship. Along with

The food bank entirely depends on donations from grocery stores throughout the Gallatin Valley and some of the café workers did not seem to know where the food came from other than from the food bank. After having worked multiple weeks at the food bank, I am surprised that the food bank is capable of supplying the Café with a meals worth of fresh food daily. It seems a bit like a gamble to base an establishment on donations. The food bank never knows how much they will receive in donations. Some days they run out of space to hold everything, and other days there is no fresh

Instead of wasting time making meals every day I now have a few days a week in which I will make a large meal that I can quickly eat throughout the week. I will run to the store this morning before work and stock up on some healthy, but hasty day friendly foods for the next few weeks. I usually would go to the grocery store every few days to buy a few items, but I will now try to go only every few weeks. Also, I will set some time aside each week, factoring in extra shifts, in which to study at the library, as I am more efficient there then at home as there are so many distractions; such as roommates who always have the television on. With this new time management plan, I should be able to accomplish my tasks and have some extra time available. When my internship and Towne’s Harvest Practicum are over in August, I will be taking a week long camping trip up to either Glacier National Park or Banff National Park where no one can reach me on my phone to fill a shift. With all the extra shifts I will have worked and if I put in my time off request now, I should have a good enough of an excuse for a vacation and more than enough money to go on one. These extra Thursday shifts are going to be written down in my weekly planner as extra