When looking for volunteering opportunities this summer, Matt Yi (11) was eager to make more of an impact in their community. He began volunteering with the nonprofit food relief charity and food bank, Feeding San Diego at the Poway Library.
“Showing up is already, like, a really big step to doing all this stuff.” Yi said. “I think it takes a lot of courage, going out of your comfort zone to show up, because everyone just wants to stay at home over the summer. No one wants to actually do anything. So if you can even just find something small like this, I think that’s a big help.”
Feeding San Diego partners with libraries across San Diego to help kids get access to meals. Last year, the organization served more than 88,000. This summer, the program expanded even further, with 16 total libraries participating in the program over the course of eight weeks. Yi spent a few hours every week, sorting through food shipments and handing out food to people.
“In the collaboration, the library would receive weekly shipments of food every Wednesday,” Yi said. “They’d get big crates of fresh foods, dry foods, drinks, everything. Then they get a bunch of volunteers. We come in, sort the food, pass it out, and bring it to families’ cars.”
In addition to packaging and organizing food for families, Yi also helped out those who required assistance with carrying the food.
“It was usually either elderly folks, injured or disabled individuals, or people who had multiple portions that needed help,” Yi said. “My group and I wanted to assist whenever we could, so we gladly helped them out in that way.”
Feeding San Diego estimates that around 100,000 children in [San Diego County] don’t have access to food during the summer. Over the course of volunteering, Yi learned how difficult summer was for the multitude of families with food insecurity in San Diego. He said that seeing the importance of helping others who are struggling inspired them to help out more with the program next year.
“I just found it to be something very important for our community; I think that was my main drive,” Yi said “There are a lot of people struggling with this issue. I want to make sure that they have this access over the summer. It just opened my eyes to how many people in our community actually are in need and just how big our community is. It helped me feel like I should do more for our community as well.”
