Wednesday, October 31, 2012

MANNA Food Preparation - Youssouf Camara

Manna is a Pennsylvanian non-profit organization that focuses on providing nutritional meals for a number of communities but particularly, those at acute nutritional risk due to life-threatening illness (such as Cancer, HIV/AIDS, and other illness). Volunteers work alongside Manna’s chefs to prepare and package >3,500 medically appropriate meals each weekday.

True to its word, preparing and packaging food is exactly what Emily, Stephanie, and I did. Around 10, we arrived and got a few minutes to chill and talk to other volunteers (cookies were provided). As soon as we got settled, it was off to work. And not surprisingly, there was always something to do. Part 1 was the conveyor belt – starts with an empty container and ends with sealed packaged food. Now, it was pretty fun to get there, meet the other volunteers, chat with your friends while packaging food. Emily and Steph were both at the fruit station and I took the opportunity to make the activity unnecessarily competitive and see who could scoop faster (Steph won). Part 2 was washing and chopping celery. If you’ve seen the pictures of us at Manna, you’ll notice that we went through an impressive amount of celery. It’s a fairly monotonous task made fun by witnessing your friends’ cutting skills: from slapping a knife to the board while praying that your fingers and celery make it out ok to cutting slowly timidly enough that your celery might actually make it out in one piece. Part 3 was clean-up which took all of 3 minutes and then we said our goodbyes.

We worked out an arrangement with Manna where the Rotaract Club could go regularly to 23rd Street, every other week, and only need to fill out a waiver ahead of time. It’s the simplest way I can imagine of getting some valuable community service and spending time with your fellow Rotaractors.