Meeting an Unsung Hero

Team: Barrett and Dean

There are a lot of “unsung heroes” in Orlando who most of us will never know about.  We had the chance to meet one of them recently during a visit to the Second Harvest Food Bank Warehouse.

“Mr. Bill”– as the nameplate on his desk reads – is a gentleman who is “old enough to retire,” but who instead spends his days organizing the large volume of food and product donations that come into the warehouse.

With impressive organization and efficiency, Mr. Bill coordinates all donations while also supervising both the regular employees and his daily volunteers.  According to Mr. Bill, the age and number of volunteers can vary from day to day, but he is always appreciative of the assistance and ready to train a new crop of recruits.

On the day of our visit, we were joined by a number of folks from Dunkin Donuts as well as others interested in helping assist this worthy program as they prepare for the holiday crunch.

Dean presents a $100 donation to Mindy Ortiz at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

 

Because food is delivered from all over in a wide variety of stages, every piece must be personally inspected to ensure that it is within the date limit before it can be distributed.  As we soon discovered, dates and package codes have different meanings depending on the item and Mr. Bill began our session with a 20-minute training soliloquy that had everyone engaged and laughing and that would make Shakespeare proud.

By the end of his tutorial, we were ready and eager to start reviewing and sorting items.  The organization was really impressive as we spread out on both sides of a long row of tables and started reviewing and sorting items.  Over the next two and a half hours, our group of 25 people sorted through seven pallets of material that included everything from chili powder, juice and cereal to Disney dolls, cookies and Ghirardelli chocolates

 

It was really eye-opening and a little disheartening to see how many of the donated items, which come from all the grocery chains and other grocery sellers in the area, were past their “use by” date and had to be discarded.  However, the amount of good food was also staggering and will help ensure that many Central Floridians have much needed food items over the next few weeks.

The work of Second Harvest is really quite amazing.  The food they collect is distributed to 450 nonprofit agencies within their six-county service area. They also accept monetary donations and are able to leverage that money in ways that purchases significantly more food than if you and I used the money at the grocery store and then gave them the items.  As part of our Give Yourself outreach, we made a $100 donation on behalf of Curley & Pynn to the agency that according to their projections, will allow for the purchase of roughly $900 in food value.

At the end of our three-hour session, Mr. Bill thanked all of us for the assistance and said he is always appreciative of repeat volunteers as well as referrals.  While the rest of us went back to our regular jobs the next day, you can guarantee that Mr. Bill was back at the warehouse training another set of volunteers and doing all he can to help stamp out hunger in Central Florida.