The week of Martin Luther King Day, I headed just down the street to Operation Food Search, a St. Louis area food bank, the largest distributor of free food in the bi-state area.
Operation Food Search (OFS) is comprised of small offices tacked onto a humungous warehouse, approximately half of which is full of food. One function of OFS is to distribute the food it receives in bulk to shelters, food pantries, soup kitchens and senior centers. In addition, OFS conducts “Operation Frontline” to educate families about nutrition and healthy cooking. In one corner of the warehouse is a small test kitchen in which volunteer chefs and nutritionists create healthy meals from items commonly found at a food bank.
Another project OFS heads up is “Operation Back Pack,” which endeavors to make sure that children who rely on meals from their schools don’t go hungry over the weekend. Each Monday, these children return backpacks to OFS. Throughout the week, volunteers and OFS employees pack these backpacks with food for the weekends, and they are returned to the kids on Friday afternoon. When I was there on Thursday, the tally of bags that had been packed was almost two thousand!
OFS also endeavors to be as eco-friendly as possible. Cardboard boxes and mixed paper are recycled. Additionally, OFS accepts unwanted furniture and scrap metal that they sell to organizations that either reuse or recycle them. The money they get from these green initiatives also goes to buy food to feed the hungry in St. Louis.
My job for the day was to tackle the bins of food donated from various food drives across the area and sort them into emptied banana boxes. Each of these boxes went to a needy individual or family, and in two hours, I filled close to twenty! It was great cause and an awesome organization, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to be of service in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
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