……I’ve always wanted to take students to the Daily Bread Food Bank

On Thursday I told you I had misplaced my camera and the two school cameras. Luckily they had been put away for safe keeping in the office as I had suspected and hoped.

Fifteen years ago when I taught middle school I tried to plan a trip to the local food bank so that students could volunteer and experience first hand how the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto worked. At the time, most of my students were underage and not allowed to visit the warehouse. Imagine my surprise this year when one of our primary teachers was able to organize a field trip to the new facility for our grade 3 to 5 students. My principal knew how much I had always wanted to do this so she asked me if I wanted to accompany the students to the warehouse. I jumped at the chance.

On Thursday, Mme M and I, along with four parent volunteers, escorted 29 enthusiastic students to the Daily Bread Food Bank. After registering at the front desk, the kids dropped off 150 pounds of food and then awaited instructions for their next task. A load of fresh carrots and onions had been delivered that morning so our job was to bag the vegetables into net sacks that held five pounds.

The kids couldn’t get over how big these carrots were. The parents thought that a trip to a farm was in order.

I helped bag these onions. We prepared 200 five pound bags. That’s 1000 pounds of onions.

Talk about throwing yourself into your work.

It was dirty work but the kids loved it. Some of them even said it was the best field trip, ever.

After finishing our task we were treated to a snack and given a tour of the facility. In the end, our hard work provided fresh vegetables for 200 families in the Toronto area.