14 Aug St Francis Center

The other day I helped out at The St Francis Center in Downtown Los Angeles. We arrived at 9:00 am and left at 12.I helped unpack water shoes for a summer camp they organized for the homeless children. After that we shucked corn and stacked it in boxes. The main room was set up like a grocery store wit tins, bottles, dry food and frozen food on one side and fresh produce on the other. They also had express boxes that people could pick food out of if they didn’t want to wait in the line or if they had back or leg problems. Each person had a “Pantry Card” which was their version of a debit card except it didn’t have any money on it. Everyone brought bags, shopping carts and even strollers to fill with food. The main show of people were families and mother. There were a couple of men and all of them were Spanish. I was in charge of giving each person 1 corn. I felt that it should have been more corn because lots of the people there had very large families 1 corn wasn’t enough. By the end of the morning they had upped it to 3 corns which was a lot better but I still thought they should have been able to pick the amount they wanted. They were giving out clothes, baby bottles and blankets as well as food. All of the food was given to the center by places like, Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs…it was all of their left over food form each day. There was so much of it. If it hadn’t been given to the center then it would have all been thrown in the trash. It would have been a terrible waste of food. After the morning was over, we helped clean up and re-stack food for the next day. They use this food over three days so I do understand that they have to ration it out. At the center they give out breakfast, they have shower days and mail days. It put a smile on my face to see the smiles on theirs.