Yesterday we got down and dirty and revealed our 2011 vices; today
we'll wipe the slate clean and talk about what personal virtues we
discovered in 2011.
What good have you done in 2011? Where do you really shine? What have you done that makes you proud of yourself?
This is an area where I feel like I could be better. I'm not particularly good about giving money and time is something that is hard to give. Right before Thanksgiving though, I did two activities that I meant to blog about anyway, so this is probably as good of a time as any.
The first was a volunteer session at Second Harvest Heartland with about 10 members of my team at work. Second Harvest is a food bank in the Twin Cities area that provides food to various shelters, food shelves, and the like. We went to their warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis and packaged rice into individual packages for 3 hours. It was very similar work to the work I've done at Feed My Starving Children as an activity with another work team. There were other opportunities to do work with food donated from grocery stores. This is a great charity, doing an important job. They gather a lot of perfectly good food from stores around the metro area that otherwise would have to toss because of expiration dates. We ended up going through most of a huge thing of rice in our three hour shift. I was a sealer, which I feel like I was pro at by the time the shift was over.
The second volunteer activity I did was to take a day off of work (paid, thanks to my employer's generous gift of two paid days to go do volunteer work) and work at Bridging, Inc. in their warehouse. Bridging is an organization that collects furniture donations to supply to people getting back on their feet, getting their own place again, typically coming out of shelters or from living with someone else. Katie took the day off too and she worked in the front doing client visits, sorting of linens and office work. I moved furniture around. It was very rewarding. I met a lot of great volunteers and you can directly see the impact of what you do. A great organization and I hope to volunteer there again soon.
This is an area where I feel like I could be better. I'm not particularly good about giving money and time is something that is hard to give. Right before Thanksgiving though, I did two activities that I meant to blog about anyway, so this is probably as good of a time as any.
The first was a volunteer session at Second Harvest Heartland with about 10 members of my team at work. Second Harvest is a food bank in the Twin Cities area that provides food to various shelters, food shelves, and the like. We went to their warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis and packaged rice into individual packages for 3 hours. It was very similar work to the work I've done at Feed My Starving Children as an activity with another work team. There were other opportunities to do work with food donated from grocery stores. This is a great charity, doing an important job. They gather a lot of perfectly good food from stores around the metro area that otherwise would have to toss because of expiration dates. We ended up going through most of a huge thing of rice in our three hour shift. I was a sealer, which I feel like I was pro at by the time the shift was over.
The second volunteer activity I did was to take a day off of work (paid, thanks to my employer's generous gift of two paid days to go do volunteer work) and work at Bridging, Inc. in their warehouse. Bridging is an organization that collects furniture donations to supply to people getting back on their feet, getting their own place again, typically coming out of shelters or from living with someone else. Katie took the day off too and she worked in the front doing client visits, sorting of linens and office work. I moved furniture around. It was very rewarding. I met a lot of great volunteers and you can directly see the impact of what you do. A great organization and I hope to volunteer there again soon.
