Location: Coppin Community Center
Date: Sunday, June 08, 2014; 1:30-5:00 pm
The title for the project is a
mouthful and we have Wilson to thank for that.
He had posted this on a Meetup and his strategy is to try and
incorporate as much information about the project as possible into the title
itself! Wilson told me that although most of the
work would be done by ‘Americorp’ volunteers, they also needed some additional volunteers to help out. This is where I came in. The place was in the South Side and it took
me some time to get there. While
enroute, I saw through the website that many people were dropping out. Yeah, I guess they would probably need me.
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| The decorations |
I entered a big hall and found
the volunteer coordinator Alyssa, who I had met at Wilson’s Mother’s Day Brunch
project. The ‘Americorp’ group was in the process of setting up and Alyssa said
that they could use some help with the balloons. To my relief, the said balloons had already
been inflated and they just needed to be put up on the walls. We put some up on the railings leading to the
entrance and then some on the walls in the lobby and then inside the hall where
the event was to be held. Alyssa
mentioned that the program today was geared towards promoting nutrition for
kids and there were several tables that had been specifically designed for that
– such as a food trivia quiz, a brilliant poster with the nutritional
information usually found on food labels, and a chart on daily calorific
intake. I asked Alyssa what I could do and she said that I could help with face painting. Well, that wasn’t going to happen unless the
kids wanted to end up in tears.
 |
| My contraption |
I walked about and saw that the
trivia boards needed some help in standing up straight. I worked with some of the ‘Americorp’ team to get
that stabilized on the tables. I
actually came up with an idea to put a pin on the top of the board and tie with
a string to hold tension, followed by the ever reliable duct tape. And it
worked. Something I designed actually
worked! With that monumental achievement
done, I helped put some posters while chatting with the young volunteers. They were from all over the country and
currently based in Iowa, but travel from place to place helping people and
organizations such as these. They have
been in Chicago since May, though their tour over here would be over by the end
of the week. I was also surprised to
learn that they had served as “roadies”
at ‘Serve-a-thon’ yesterday. I must have walked past them in my mad rush
to get to the food and drinks inside the Leader’s tent!
I was beginning to wonder where
Wilson was, just as he walked in with the food supplies. There was still some cooking left to be done
and I said that I could help out in the kitchen. Alyssa said that we had to make a salad and I
said that I could take ownership of that.
The first ingredient I looked at was Avocado’s, but all of them had gone
bad and could not be used. So I started
by chopping some mushrooms and garlic and sautéing them. Then I made a dressing with vinegar, oil and
honey – something that I had never done for myself. In the meanwhile, kids had arrived outside
and one little girl came inside the kitchen to see what we were up to. I gave her a taste of the dressing and asked
for feedback. She said that I should add
some garlic flakes and lemon and so I sent her to get lemon wedges from the
lemonade stand outside. She did so and
after adding a bit of each of her suggested ingredients, she voiced her
approval and the dressing was done!
Alyssa chopped some lettuce and added radishes and strawberries.
While we were doing that, Alyssa
told me about her volunteer duties at the center. It says on their website, “We provide community development and supportive services that address
social and academic needs of low income and vulnerable children and families. We were founded in 2006. We aim primarily to
address both citywide and statewide needs for affordable housing and
homelessness services, education, after-school and out-of-school time
programming, environmental and community wide building workshops, and health
and wellness services for children and families.” As a part of this, they run a food pantry every
Monday and one of Alyssa’s duties is to organize that, including
coordination of food donations and distribution.
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| My dressing was a big hit! |
We took the salad outside, along
with the dressing and the mushrooms and put it next to the other items such as
health bars. Alyssa has said that we should
leave mushrooms separate and the guests could add if required. I looked around and the festivities were well
and truly on with kids playing hula-hoops, some ring toss like game and some
general running around. I went around
and tried my luck at the “guess the food
by touching” game as well as the trivia game – the boards were still
standing! I returned back to the salad station and saw that the dressing had
been a big hit - so much so that I had to go back inside the kitchen to make
some more. I told the little girl who
had helped me with the ingredients and the mixing that she could claim some of
the credit.
The party was over and I helped
the ‘Americorp’ volunteers rearrange
the furniture and then took the garbage out with Alyssa. She told me that ‘Coppin’ would be walking in the upcoming ‘Hunger Walk’ and I promised that I would walk with her and the
team. I left after making new friends
and as I walked through the lobby, I saw the ‘Americorp’ volunteers all dressed up to go out for the evening - one of the last few that they had remaining in Chicago. They had earned this time of leisure for
sure.
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