Give Big: Yeske Buie East Coast Helps Prepare Food for Others

Last week, our team members in the east coast office volunteered with a local group, Food for Others. Their mission is simple – to distribute free food to our neighbors in need – but their impact is beyond impressive. Food for Others serves 400-600 families every day Monday through Friday in the Northern Virginia area. In 2014, they distributed over 2.2 million pounds of free food with a donation value of $3,718,000. They distribute the free food through both warehouse services and neighborhood sites – the only question asked is, “How many people will be sharing this food?”

Our team contributed to the mission by packaging grocery bags and boxed goods for distribution to people in need in Northern Virginia. While the team has participated with a variety of impactful organizations, Yusuf noted that this was his favorite Give Big activity and Lauren G. said “There is something very humbling and powerful about helping the hungry in our own back yard. I want to get more involved with them!”

The team plans to volunteer with Food for Others again and the organization provides lots of opportunities to do so. In addition to the warehouse volunteering, Food for Others has an inspirational Power Pack Program which was created to provide elementary-school children with a food pack for the weekend. The packs contain breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and drink items and are given to students at high risk of food insecurity on the weekends to ensure they have more nutrition and less worry about where their next meal will come from. The team plans to participate in this program in the coming months so stay tuned to our Digest to see how we work to make a difference in our community.

Yusuf, Cristin, Lauren V, Lauren G, and Victoria at Food for Others.	Our team filled this cage with grocery bags in less than an hour!
Lauren V and Cristin packaging grocery bags.	Victoria started the assembly line by preparing the double bags.
Lauren G and Yusuf near the end of the assembly line, placing the bags in the cage.	Yusuf finishes the bags and they are ready for distribution.
The team filled three cages and hundreds of bags for distribution to local families in need.	Much of the food donated to Food for Others comes from local grocery stores who planned to throw away the food.