Letter of Thanks

The following letter was shared on April 25, 2013 with Erika Ledbetter, Food Program Assistant at Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services. Heather volunteered her time in the Food program during the spring semester.

Dear Erika,

I have truly enjoyed my Service Learning time with Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services. I had another class in community college where we had to do community service and chose to complete the hours with the local food bank. I was living in a different area then, and their program was purely food related. When I saw Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services on the list of approved sites, I immediately knew that I would complete my hours there because it was something I had a little experience doing already. When I came in for orientation, I quickly learned that my assumption that this food bank would be like the one that I already had worked for was way off. Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services is a fantastic organization that not only offers the food component but computer classes for all ages, tutoring, child care, clothing and a parent education component as well. I was surprised by how many different options were offered to the community through this organization I thought was all about food.

I knew right away that I would really enjoy the food distributions. My current job is in retail, so customer service is something that I am very familiar with. Handing out food at the food distributions reminds me a lot of customer service, where you do whatever you can to make the clients/customers happy during the short time they are choosing to spend with us. I have loved the interactions especially with the clients during the food distributions. Truthfully, I simply enjoy interacting with others. I have come to find that I really enjoy spending time with the other volunteers and the regular workers during the food distributions.

Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services is so organized and seems to have everything together, so I was slightly intimidated by the required project I had to complete for my Child Development 132 class, which was to find a way to improve the site in some way. I am glad to be able to contribute something that will hopefully really help the organization in the long run with produce information cards that have titles in different languages for non-English speakers.

Volunteering for Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services is something that I would love to continue doing after my Service Learning hours have been completed.

Sincerely,
Heather