A "Day On" in Service

Faithful blog-readers, I need your help!

As you may know, AmeriCorps*VISTA members make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a "day on" not a "day off." That means that instead of taking the usual holiday to sit around and hang out, we spend our time as a day of service to our community (just like every other day of the year).

While Alex and I technically don't get Martin Luther King Jr. Day off from Shared Harvest, we are still getting in on the National Day of Service by participating in 3 different service projects throughout the day. We plan to volunteer at a local food pantry (project pending), a local animal shelter (project pending), and helping out the YWCA battered women's shelter. This third project was originally supposed to just be about packing up toiletry items and other assorted necessities for women and children living in the shelter. But then somewhere between finding the project online and signing up to help, we were roped in to actually collecting the items for the care packages.

How are we supposed to do that?

Well, we started at area businesses, mostly in Forest Park (because this shelter is in Cincinnati), asking for donations from the list. To put it simply, we haven't had much luck. After an entire afternoon of driving around and begging managers to help out (with official letterhead, I might add!), we only have $25 worth of office supplies from Office Depot. We're following up with some store managers who at least raised their eyebrows at us later this week, but in the meantime....

CAN YOU HELP?

Here is a list of things that the women at the shelter said they would really like to have. Check it out:

Office/School Supplies:

• Blue and black ink pens
• Dry erase markers
• Folders-2 pocket
• Rolls of postage stamps

Children's items:

• Baby bottles
• Baby monitors
• Baby play pens/Port-a-cribs
• Baby wipes
• Diapers (all sizes)

Women's clothing:

• Underwear sizes 5-10

Household items:

• Blankets (all sizes)
• Paper cups
• Pillow cases
• Pillows
• Sheet Sets (all sizes)
• Towels (all sizes)

Cleaning Supplies:

• Air freshner
• Carpet freshner
• Clorox disinfectant wipes
• Dish detergent
• Disinfectant spray
• Liquid laundry detergent
• Paper towels
• Pine Sol cleaner
• Trash bags, small and large
• Zip lock bags, sandwich & gallon size

Personal Hygiene items:

• Bar soap
• Body lotion
• Body wash/shower gel
• Cotton balls
• Female sanitary items
• Hair accessories
• Hair products (ethnic)
• Hand sanitizer
• Latex gloves

Miscellaneous items:

• Alarm clocks
• Batteries (all sizes)
• Fast food restaurant gift cards
• Gas gift cards
• Phone calling cards ($5)
• Movie passes
• Target/Walmart/Kroger gift cards

If you live in the Greater Cincinnati area and would like to get involved, please consider donating some of the above items. Just shoot me an email at kaitlyn@sharedharvest.org and I'll even come pick up your donation (as long as you live in the Greater Cincinnati area!) And if you live outside of the area and would like to help, still shoot me an email and we'll figure something out. Keep in mind that we can stretch your cash donation pretty far to purchase supplies, as well.

I hope you'll consider supporting survivors of domestic violence!

And start thinking about how you'll personally make MLK Jr. Day 2010 a "day on" in service!

Someone's been Krogering...

The Check Out Hunger campaign has officially ended and according to my calculations from our weekly reports, the donation grand total is:

$18,219!

Thanks to the generous Kroger customers from Oxford to Mason (and 15 other stores in between) we were able to collect more money than ever before in the history of the COH campaign. (We raised $12,696.00 in 2008, $13,428.00 in 2007, and $9,267.00 in 2006.)

And if that isn't amazing enough, remember that Shared Harvest can stretch $1 into 8 meals, meaning these donations will provide roughly 145,752 meals to the local community, give or take a few meals.

Great job, Kroger customers! Thank you so much!

Exciting times!

The start of a new year has brought lots of excitement to Shared Harvest! Monday marked the kick off of the "Fill that Bus!" food drive in the Hamilton City School District. It took nearly all day, but Alex and I delivered 17 barrels and 400 boxes to all of the schools and education offices in the district. I believe this is the first district-wide food drive that's been done with Shared Harvest, and we can't wait to see how much is collected. This will definitely help re-stock the shelves at our partner agencies after the holidays.

On Tuesday we did a few final snowy food drive pick ups at Totes International, Greentree Health Science Academy, Wildwood Elementary, and Northrop Grumman. I was looking back at the past few months, and I did a little number crunching. Between October and December, I picked up 28,412 pounds of food with either Alex, Holli, Mary, Joe, or even Taylor, at about 65 different locations! And with each pound of food valued at $1, that equals $28,412!

Many other locations donated food during the 2009 holiday season, as well. All in all, Holli informed me that the 2009 Holiday Aid Food Drive brought in a total of 49,510 pounds of food, which is 7,350 pounds more than during the 2008 holiday season.

Alex and I would like to think we had something to do with the increase in donations this year, but we know that the real reason for the increase was the tremendous generosity of the community. Thank you to all of the area businesses, schools, and churches who worked so hard to collect so much food! We are so appreciative for your support, and we hope you will hold many more food drives with Shared Harvest in the future, including outside of the holiday season.

As I mentioned near the top of the post, these were our final food drive pick ups for the season. This fact brings mixed emotions to our office. On the one hand, we are relieved to be finished with all of the heavy lifting, but we'll certainly miss our adventures with Gus. Like it or not, the holiday food drive is over and tax season is here, so it was time to say good bye to our little bus friend. Check out our final picture with Gus on Alex's blog.

Wednesday had its fair share of excitement, as well. The CheckOut Hunger drive officially ended last week, so it was time to collect the coupon placards and get them ready for next year. Part of the job included removing adhesive from the placards so that they are ready for next year's set of coupons to be attached. We constructed an adhesive removal tool out of a razor blade and duct tape, but clumsy me, I used the tool to slice open my thumb instead of taking off the adhesive! Alex took me to Urgent Care where I received nine stitches and a tetanus shot. It was a pretty minor incident, though my thumb still stings a little and the tetanus shot has made my arm feel like it's full of lead! With the impending snow fall today, I decided to take a few hours off this afternoon to relax at home. Hopefully I'll feel back to my normal self tomorrow, stitches and all!

Nothing but Food Stamps

Remember a few months ago when The New York Times reporter Jason DeParle visited us in Southwest Ohio to do a story on food stamps? Over the weekend, The Times ran the next installment of his series on food stamp usage in the U.S. This time he reported from Florida and focused on a growing population relying on food stamps as their only source of income--no disability checks, no unemployment, no cash assistance or 'welfare'--just food stamps.

But this isn't just an issue in Florida. The New York Times collected food stamp data from 31 states and found that all had experienced a rise in the number of people relying on food stamps as their only source of income. According to the article, 314,200 Ohioans were receiving food stamps as their only income, which is up 37% from 2007.

Keep in mind, food stamps are a work support program, meaning you have to work to earn the benefit. But when there is no work to be had, people can volunteer at various local agencies or enroll in job training classes to satisfy the requirement. At least, that's how it works in Ohio.

You might be wondering how someone could survive with no cash income other than a few hundred dollars a month in food stamps. DeParle explores this trend and tells the stories of a few families and individuals who have managed to get by with what they have, which happens to be food stamps. It's definitely worth a look.

"Seat belts, everyone!"

It's been nearly a week since my last post! Time to remedy this.

Last Tuesday was markedly better than Monday. With the windows in our trucks replaced, I was ready to do some serious food-driving. Somehow I managed to do 3 of the food drive pick ups from barrels in area Kroger stores on Monday in my little Oldsmobile, but we were still behind.

With Alex and Holli out of the office, and the warehouse busy with end of the month inventory, I wasn't too sure who would accompany me on my food drive pick ups that day. To my pleasant surprise, though, Taylor didn't have class on Tuesday, and he offered to volunteer with the food drive that day! So we loaded up Gus with two empty pallets, a cart, and a bunch of boxes and hit the road.

Together we were able to accomplish quite a bit! I handled all of the driving (while Taylor whistled the theme song from "The Magic School Bus"), and Taylor did all the heavy lifting. He could lift a full barrel into the truck all by himself! We ended up bringing more than 650 pounds of food back to Shared Harvest from an assortment of places, including: the Beach Water Park, Greater Harvest Church, CSL Plasma, YMCA of Middletown, Verso Paper Co., just to name a few.

I had a great time working with Taylor. It was fun for him to see a little of what I do everyday, and it's always great to share community service projects with others. I've never been one for new year's resolutions, but maybe as we enter this new decade, one of mine might be to spend more time with Taylor giving back to the community. With our schedules, we don't get to see each other too much, so the time we do have together should be spent meaningfully, not in front of the TV! Perhaps we can figure out a way to volunteer together on our off days.

Meet Taylor! Unfortunately, my camera wasn't working on Tuesday, but this picture captures the spirit of the day--brrr!

Meanwhile, I'll have a busy week wrapping up holiday food drives and the Check Out Hunger campaign, as well as starting a new project surrounding school supplies for kids in Butler County. Oh and did I mention, it's now officially tax season? Let the chaos begin!

In this my 100th post, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Good things are coming in 2010.