Packing Lunches

I think the basic needs for a human are food, water and shelter. If I had to choose one of those basic needs and eliminated it from my life I would choose shelter. I would choose shelter because my family and I have so many close friends and family members we would be able to stay with them. If a friend or family member were to lose their house we would do the same. I know a lot of people don’t have family members or friends to live with. I am very glad that my family does. I would never want to lose any basic needs because they are all so important.
Everyone in the community can help. People can donate things. They can donate food, clothes, blankets, toys and many other things. People can also work at places like the Food Bank or a soup kitchen. Anything will help. I have worked at the Oregon Food Bank many times and even had my birthday party there. My friend had so much fun that she had hers there, too.
Having a good strong community is really important. It is important because if people don’t help those in need very few other people will. That’s why I think SES is so great. We do a lot for the community and we pack lunches every week to give to a church. That’s one way SES is so special. People don’t realize that even something little like a stuffed animal could help. A little kid could get it and be so happy! I think it is really important to tell other people about how to help and do fund raisers and food drives.
Each Wednesday my class (Frank’s class) packed lunches for the people getting their meal at the church. After they have a meal they could get a bag and it would have a meal in it for the next day. It would also contain a happy little note to cheer them up and hopefully would make their day brighter. After lunch we would divide into groups. One group would make cards and the other group would make and pack lunches. The people making cards would find Jan’s car and carry the food we had that day. They would bring it into the cafeteria while the people making the lunches would be washing their hands twice. The people who were making cards would start making them while the people packing lunches would put on gloves and get organized. The people making sandwiches would count how much bread they had so they could tell the others. The people not making the sandwiches would have others snacks and fruit we would put in. Some things like chips and cookies had to be put in bags. The people who were doing fruit would see if any of the fruit was rotten. Once everyone knew how many sandwiches were being made they would decide how many bars, fruit, cookies or chips would go in each bag. Then the assembly line would begin. The people at the beginning of the line would be the ones making sandwiches. They made the sandwich and put it into a small bag. They would pass it to someone who would put it in a big bag and pass it. The next people either had chips, cookies or energy bars. They would pass it on. The last people to get it were the people doing fruit. They put something in (usually a pear) and they would put it on a table. When we were done people would go around putting cards into the bags. We would all clean up and carry the lunches to the church. We walked over and waited until someone opened the door. Then we would all go in and put the lunches on the counter where people could grab a lunch after their meal.
We all got to make lunches at least once and make cards at least once. One problem I had was that people didn’t take making cards seriously. Most of the time people were goofing off. It makes me mad that they didn’t try to make the cards nice. People who are getting their meal usually have bad or rough days. Making lunches are fun. Sometimes it goes really fast and it is really hard. Other times it seems it is taking forever for them.
It feels good knowing someone will be getting an extra meal. For some people it probably is their only meal. I think these lunches help a lot. It is really cool to see all those plastic bags lined up on the counter at the church. We use so many plastic bags making lunches because cookies and chips usually go into plastic bags and if you think about all the lunches there are there is a lot of plastic being used. I think it is alright that we use them because it is for a good cause.
I really liked doing this. It is always a really good feeling knowing you are giving someone a meal. It is really fun making sandwiches or being part of the assembly line. It is really fun when everything goes really fast because then you have to go fast. Making cards are fun, especially when you take your time. I think making lunches for the church is really fun and it really helps others!

Annie