My day of service to Adams Morgan
My latest adventure with One Brick led me to volunteering for the Adams Morgan Festival in Washington, DC on September 11. I was excited to help set-up for the day’s festivities because I had spent a few months living in the neighborhood and it brought a lot of memories back! Of course, the day was meaningful for other reasons as well: it was my way to recognize the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance.
I was holding off on this post in hopes of garnering a copy of the photos of volunteering that day, but alas, none have surfaced. Our duties were pretty simple: setting up tables, chairs, posters – all the basic things to organize an event right down to putting out trash cans!
The event itself was a total blast (I finished volunteering with the 1st shift so I had a chance to explore and taste some of the foods from the area). The festival was free and opened to all ages. There was tons of food, local hand-made goods from countless artisans and much more. It was beautiful to see hundreds of families come out and support their neighborhood. The weather was amazing too!
FYI – here’s some information on 9/11 Day from their site – hopefully you’ll consider getting out and doing something for your community next year:
It is easy and free to participate. All you need to do (joining millions of others around the world) is observe the anniversary of 9/11 by performing good deeds, supporting charitable causes, volunteering and engaging in other acts of compassion.
Labor of love over the holiday weekend
While many people try to head out-of-town for Labor Day to celebrate the end of summer, my guy and I recently returned from a week-long vacation so we decided to stay local for the holiday. Before making any plans, we realized it had been too long since we last had a chance to volunteer together. So we put finding a volunteer opportunity at the top of our list of things we wanted to do.
I went online to search for a new volunteer experience for us, and I didn’t have to look hard at all to find one. First stop was One Brick, and when I saw an opening for DC Central Kitchen for Sunday morning, I immediately signed us up.
DC Central Kitchen, or DCCK, is a pretty remarkable program. I know I say that a lot, but every time I try a new volunteer opportunity, I’m always amazed by the mission and commitment of staff and volunteers. DCCK staff and volunteers recycle thousands of pounds of food each day, converting it (quoting staff from our volunteer briefing, not their website) into approximately 7,000 meals per day! The food is all prepared at DCCK, but it’s not a distribution point for the meals. DCCK now provides food for several DC schools, but primarily distributes food to shelters, transitional homes, and rehab clinics throughout the Washington area. From their website, DCCK’s mission is to “use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities. Our programs provide a comprehensive continuum of care to the people we serve.”
In addition to preparing meals, DCCK also offers a nationally recognized culinary job training to once homeless and hungry adults. In fact, the volunteer coordinator who greeted us on site was a graduate of the program. I believe she said they strive to hire one graduate from each training program into DCCK either in the kitchen or in the office. I can’t recall how large their staff is now, but they’re growing and really doing a lot of amazing things for the DC community. We learned upfront that we wouldn’t be working with any of the trainees, which was a bummer, but at least I was with S! Cooking is one of our favorite things to do together, so cooking and volunteering makes for the ultimate experience for us.
The volunteer coordinator ran a tight ship. But she had to – there were a couple dozen volunteers to manage from multiple organizations and there was a lot of work for us to do in a short amount of time. We were scheduled for a shift from 8:45am to 12:00pm. After signing in and getting our overview of the program, we were split up into different groups. We scrubbed down, donned plastic aprons, gloves and hair nets and then got down to business.
S, two other volunteers and I started off by cutting up and packaging giant watermelons. When we finished that, we cleaned up our work space and got down to preparing frozen chickens to cook by rubbing them down with seasoning. That was uber cold! After yet another scrub down of our small prep space, we jumped into peeling carrots. We went through dozens of pounds of food preparation in just a few hours. And there were work stations set up everywhere with volunteers doing other slicing and dicing the whole time too. It really was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. It was a great experience and we were both so happy to spend a few hours of our long weekend volunteering together.
Volunteering with DCCK is a great opportunity for groups to get together and really make a difference in a short amount of time. Check out their website for more information and opportunities to volunteer with directly with DCCK today!
WEAVE-ing together to end domestic abuse
When I was thinking about how to introduce this blog post on Washington Empowered Against Violence, a non-profit group that provides multiple no-cost services to victims of domestic violence, I wanted to take the easy route. I wanted to simply write about the mission, the cause and how important an organization like this is to the DC community. In doing so, I would have met my obligation as a volunteer for WEAVE’s Social Media Committee.
However, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about why I honestly believe in its mission to engage others in the elimination of intimate partner abuse and other forms of gender-based violence through empowering, innovative and holistic services. The truth is, I can’t help but wonder how an organization like this could have impacted – even changed the lives – of several women I’ve known in my lifetime if these services had been available to them. There was one woman in particular who I wished had these opportunities: my birth mother.
Without going into great details, I witnessed my mother’s physical abuse countless times growing up by men who supposedly loved her. It’s something to this day we’ve never talked about together. To that end, I’ve always been left to wonder: Why didn’t she get help? Why did she stay? How did she finally break free?
Perhaps these were some of the questions that the founders of WEAVE asked themselves when they first started this group in 1996. Or maybe it was the statistics from the CDC show that one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime.
Either way, something had to be done. According to WEAVE’s website, the founders conducted a community assessment in DC and found that “many women were not receiving a wide range of legal services that they need to achieve self-sufficiency and freedom from their abusers.” In particular, the survey identified the following four gaps: long-term legal services for domestic violence victims; legal services for the working poor; lack of support services among non-immigrant domestic violence victims; and the lack of counseling and social services geared specifically toward domestic violence victims.
Today, WEAVE provides legal representation, counseling, and community education to victims in the DC area. And they’re bilingual! Again I can’t help but wonder if/how my mother could have benefited from the wide range of services that WEAVE offers for free. More information is available on WEAVE’s website, but some of their services are highlighted here:
WEAVE Therapists: Assists clients in gaining a clear understanding of the full impact of prolonged victimization has had on sense of self, mental and emotional state, psychological development, and ability to function in the world.
WEAVE Client Advocates: Provides support to survivors in obtaining resources such as housing, employment, education, financial planning, transportation, health care, food and safety planning.
Support Groups: Encourages healing, validates and normalizes feelings and provides opportunities for clients to connect with other survivors.
WEAVE provided over 1,200 hours of counseling to nearly 300 clients in 2010. Furthermore, 183 clients received legal advice with over 100 clients represented by WEAVE and pro bono attorneys. That’s hundreds of victims who are finding the strength to reach out and get the help they need, whether that’s emotionally, financially, legally, or whatever they need. I’m sure some of their clients have children too, and I can only imagine how relieving it must feel to see their mothers becoming empowered thanks to support from WEAVE volunteers.
Interested in learning more about WEAVE? Want to help ensure their comprehensive services continue to be offered in the DC area? You can start by attending their 15th Anniversary Gala next month at the US Chamber of Commerce. Tickets are available online now. Pease note that 90 percent of sponsorship and ticket sales go directly to fund WEAVE’s services.
Hope you can make it to support this very worthy cause.
(Limited) extreme couponing for local food banks
Inspiration can hit anywhere at any time. Which is why I shouldn’t be surprised that my latest effort to give back was actually inspired by a reality show. When I first saw Extreme Couponing, which is about people who collect coupons like it’s a full-time job and use them to save hundreds of dollars (sometimes over a thousand) at the register, I thought these people are insane! But then I saw a couple who were using coupons to buy food for their local food pantry and my thoughts shifted to, how cool is that? Sure, it takes a lot of effort organize that kind of purchase, but in the end, it literally cost them nothing more than their time to donate hundreds of dollars worth of groceries to a needy cause. Imagine how many families they were feeding!
It kind of reminded me of last year when my boyfriend and I donated on a very small scale to a food pantry by chance. I haven’t done anything like that since.
In a twist of fate, a few days later, I noticed my office was participating in the Feds Feed Families food drive. This program has an amazing goal of raising 2 million pounds of food for families in the DC area – particularly focusing on the fact that in the summer, children are left without school nutrition programs.
I decided then and there I would take some tips from the show and put together a donation. While I draw the line at dumpster diving for coupons, I decided to look more carefully at the coupons I get in the mail and in the Sunday paper to look for items I could buy to donate.
Over my last few shopping trips, I’ve been stockpiling groceries to bring to work. I’m not quite able to get the price down to zero, but saving money on my purchases means I can actually use the extra money to buy even more to donate. In fact, it makes grocery shopping kind of thrilling. I might not get the satisfaction of cooking with these goods, but it warms my heart to know somewhere a family won’t be going hungry. And that’s worth the extra effort.
I never get enough of supporting our troops
It’s been yet another hectic month supporting the troops! My boyfriend and I swung by a happy hour fundraiser for Pets2Vets at the end of June. I followed that up with an afternoon at the ballpark as part of the USO’s Me and a Friend program, which I blogged about recently. Last week, S and I spent an evening at Walter Reed for the USO’s version of Screen on the Green. We set up a giant screen outdoors in the courtyard and watched The Adjustment Bureau with Wounded Warriors and their families. We served popcorn, ice cream and other refreshments while watching a film on a nice night…we couldn’t have really asked for more.
Most recently, I attended a comedy show fundraiser for a new non-profit in the area that also supports troops injured in battle: the Wounded Warrior Flight Team. This niche organization “provides camaraderie and opportunity for our Wounded Warriors through the magic of flight and career training and job placement in aviation”.
I was thinking about all these experiences this morning as I was driving to see my new personal trainer and listening to NPR. The show was featuring a special program through the Maryland Therapeutic Riding called Horses for Heroes. It seemed like a wonderful and unique way to support our troops through therapeutic riding sessions. They also noted the organization itself was small and depended on volunteers to keep things running smoothly. I thought I could pass this info along in case anyone was interested in a new volunteer opportunity!
I’m grateful to have so many opportunities to support our troops! However, my next volunteer committment strays a bit – I’ll be serving food to the homeless with the ladies of Audrey Bouviers. But I’m sure I’ll be back with the troops soon! 
