Service Learning Log 1: Food Delivery to Homeless

Every year, multiple times a year, Eastern Hills Community Church packs hundreds of lunches and delivers them to the poor and homeless in Denver. On Saturday May 3rd, I took part in this activity for the fifth time. I did this with my mom, sister, our church pastor, and about 15 other members of the church. When I arrived there at 9 A.M. on Saturday morning, there were 300 brown bags, more loaves of bread than I could count, packs of turkey and cheese, bags of original Lays potato chips, cookies, cans of soda, napkins, and many sheets of paper with encouraging notes on each one. We made the sandwiches and packed the bags equally in a conveyor belt style of work, so we could do this tedious task as fast as possible. When this was done, we piled into the church’s bus with the lunches and headed downtown in a central location between homeless shelters. We opened up the bus, and it seemed that instantly there was a mob scene around the bus. Homeless people were shoving each other, each fighting for a position so that they could ensure themselves a lunch for the day. Eventually, the time came where we had to turn away the remaining people because we did not have any more food. This went from a mob to a near riot. “Why would you come here without enough!?” said one lady. “This isn’t fair, thanks for the false hope!” said another. Wow. What a feeling and lack of appreciation. Although we had helped 300, we could do nothing for the other 500. This made me feel good because of the hope, but I also felt like we should have done more so that everybody could have been helped. I felt like I wanted to solve homelessness in Denver by serving lunch one day out of a year.
Every time I have done this, I have found the experience humbling, moving, and uplifting. This time was different. I felt sad, inadequate, and I felt like a “hope wrecker”. Although it was just a word, it cut me deep. I was there to help them, and they looked to me as though I was only helping certain people. How did I know? I have the mindset that I never want to help the homeless again because what I had to offer was not enough to make them all happy, so why even try?
This helped me see and respect more about the public good and civic engagement because it not an easy thing at all. There are so many people looking to you for the answers, and I did not have them. Hopefully my time at Project Homeless Connect will render different results for me personally as well as the people I am going to help. Hope is a good thing to have but a horrible thing to lose.