Our second day at D.O.O.R. consisted of us traveling to MEND which means, Meeting Each Need with Dignity. Our supervisor Art, has volunteered at MEND for 6 years. The jobs they had us do, consisted of packaging meals for single people and for families.
The meals had multiple cans of food, rice, beans, soda, pasta, and fresh produce. While, others removed canned foods from palettes and put them on shelves. After a lot of work, 68 man-hours we were told, Art took us on a tour of MEND. MEND was started in the early 70's in someone's garage. It provided food and clothes to the needy. Along with providing food and clothing, they branched out to providing computer training, gardening, sewing, English learning, eye care, dental care, medical care, portable showers, and help people earn jobs. They feed anywhere from 300-400 homeless per week. As well as, 300-400 families per week. After, our tour we ate lunch at MEND. Which was very good! After lunch and our tour we returned to our stations, and continued working for another hour.
When we got back to the church, we all walked down to 7-11 to get Slurpees. After our Slurpee trip, we played cards for 2 hours with some of the other youth groups.
For dinner, we did an exercise called a solidarity walk. Which meant they weren't giving us dinner but we had to feed ourselves, without any money. We were split up into 2 groups, girls and boys, and we walked the streets asking for money. Some of us were given money but other were turned down. It was uncomfortable to ask people for money and when they said no because it was very discouraging. Some of us came back to the church with food and others didn't. Everyone thought this was a difficult to approach people. After this activity, we had a guest speaker named Dion Ramos come and talk to us about homelessness. He talked to us about the myths and the stats of homelessness. He shared many stories of helping the homeless. Our second day was filled with up's and down's but overall an amazing day.
Sarah
When we got back to the church, we all walked down to 7-11 to get Slurpees. After our Slurpee trip, we played cards for 2 hours with some of the other youth groups.
For dinner, we did an exercise called a solidarity walk. Which meant they weren't giving us dinner but we had to feed ourselves, without any money. We were split up into 2 groups, girls and boys, and we walked the streets asking for money. Some of us were given money but other were turned down. It was uncomfortable to ask people for money and when they said no because it was very discouraging. Some of us came back to the church with food and others didn't. Everyone thought this was a difficult to approach people. After this activity, we had a guest speaker named Dion Ramos come and talk to us about homelessness. He talked to us about the myths and the stats of homelessness. He shared many stories of helping the homeless. Our second day was filled with up's and down's but overall an amazing day.
Sarah
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