Bike Rodeo

On a sunny, Thursday afternoon in May, kids from Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services’ Youth Education program at Saca Community Learning Center  participated in a Bike Rodeo lead by volunteers from Mustard Seed Spin. These volunteers brought bikes, tools, activities and resources to share with our youth in order to teach them about bike safety, bike maintenance and to promote the healthy benefits of bike-riding.

Volunteers from Mustard Seed Spin Bike Rodeo created an obstacle course for youth to practice safe bike-riding habits. For example, through this practical and beneficial activity, a 13-year-old student learned something new and is now aware that there are hand signals you can use on a bike to safely ride and communicate in traffic. 

A 10-year-old student said that she had fun and, “learned how to change a flat tire and that it is very important to wear a helmet.” Students were shown demonstrations using watermelons as “stand-in heads”, which taught about the importance of always wearing your helmet when riding your bike to avoid head injuries. Also, as part of the Bike Rodeo each youth who needed a helmet received a free one to take home. This event was a terrifically informative, fun and engaging way to teach kids about bike safety and maintenance, as well as to give them the tools and understanding needed to safely enjoy bike-riding for years to come.

Thank you Mustard Seed Spin!

Submitted by Heather Kohlmeister, Youth Education Program Manager

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