Food Bank Pros

By now, Return Serve is completely at home at the Oregon Food Bank. Six of us went back to our favorite stomping grounds on May 20. Whatever it is about them, the Food Bank repack nights bring the people out, every time! We were in one of the back rooms of the warehouse this time, sorting reject food items donated from grocery stores. After quick checks for damages that would impact safety, the good food was sent down the conveyor belt and into boxes for shipping to smaller food pantries.

I'm not sure if you caught the significance of that previous sentence.... in our wonderful volunteering journey, we have finally reached the moment when we got to interact with a motorized conveyor belt. It's a Lucy and Ethel landmark, and we're excited to have reached it and had just about as much fun with it as you might think we did.

Here's to not stopping the fun or the work until no more food goes to waste...

First ever guest blogger!

Laureen hosted an event of her very own! Please read below:

I volunteered to do an evening of book cleaning for the Children’s Book Bank in February. My friends Emily and Shannon had the event listed as a place to do service for their organization Return Serve.(www.returnserve.blogspot.com)

I really enjoyed the evening, and I liked what I saw which is an organization that puts their money into what they do and not in a fancy office and a lot of staff. I asked Tom Myers about having a similar event for my 6 ½ year old grand daughter Eva, and some of her friends. My daughter Julie Rae and I had both been trying to find service projects that Eva could join in, and I thought this would be a good choice.

I was told that all of their cleaning sessions were booked at the time, but if I could collect 300 - 500 books, we could make our own group. So I committed to doing a fundraiser for an organization I knew nothing about 6 months ago. It seemed like the right thing to do because books were very important to me growing up, and I liked the idea of doing something that would get books to kids who might not otherwise have access to them.

I held the event in my home. I limited it to people I knew and their friends. I wanted the event to be small enough that people could interact. There was time for refreshments and connecting with people the first hour or so.

Then we sat in a talking circle so everyone could see each other. People talked about books that were important to them, which prompted some discussion in the group. It was especially fun to hear the little kids tell us about their favorite books.

The fundraiser was a huge success. And it was a great party

that included all ages. People donated 365 books and over $500. So I urge others to consider doing something similar for this organization or an organization you feel connected to.

To learn more about the Children’s Book Bank, visit www.childrensbookbank.org.

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The pictures are from a book cleaning event Laureen and her group did at the Children's Book Bank after the fundraiser at her house.

Putting our best lettuce forward

Wednesday, April 21, Return Serve helped Birch Community Services prepare for their annual fund-raising breakfast. BCS is a group helping the working poor through access to surplus grocery food and supplies, cooking and budgeting classes and community building and support. Sweat equity keeps the whole organization humming so the volunteer opportunities aren't as numerous as they might be so we were happy to help! We cleared the warehouse floor to make room for the breakfast tables, we wrapped silverware, set up tables and chairs, and placed the table settings. The best part was seeing the great centerpieces made out of lettuce bouquets. Perfect to the theme, beautiful, edible! We hope the breakfast-goers were inspired and touched and that Birch has a fantastic year.

Native relations

Return Serve volunteers tore at the invasive species in Nadaka Park in Gresham on April 17. Nadaka was a Camp Fire Girls camp, then was abandoned. The Wilkes East Neighborhood Association is making great efforts in restoring the park. The park is not very large, but is a remarkably dense forest for being located right in the heart of an suburban residential neighborhood. The smaller size makes the task of removing the invasives not as daunting as it is in a place like Forest Park. At one point, one of our volunteers said: "I think this one's Win-able!!" I think that is the general consensus.

One interesting side note however, one of the neighbors whose backyard shares a fence with Nadaka told one of us that she wished we wouldn't take out all the ivy and blackberry because she had always like the privacy they provided. We're so used to working with people who understand what harm the invasives can do to the forests - I don't know that this neighbor understands that the trees that I am guessing she likes very much are at risk. It's a good reminder that education is one of the most important volunteering we can all do. And, reminding her that Metro had a native plant sale going on just over the fence would have been helpful, too! We'll keep it at it, and maybe once we've "won", the neighbor will love her healthy forest more than she ever thought she could.

Keep the wine flowing!

It's amazing what people will do for charity. Sometimes, we spread composted elephant droppings around on a garden plot, and sometimes we put on our nice clothes and ask people, ever so nicely, to please not handle the wine. On March 6, the annual event known as the Classic Wines Auction took place at the Oregon Convention Center. The auction raises money for five non-profits that support children and families. We found out about the volunteer opportunity through our friends at New Avenues for Youth.

The auction is really an amazing to-do with lights, sparkles, prizes and delicious food everywhere you look. We were "Silent Auction Stewards" and we spent the evening encouraging bids on the silent auction prizes which were mostly bottles of wine and getaway vacation packages. (And also, of course, making sure the wine bottles stayed where they belonged.) The night raised $2.3 million dollars for the charities, which is both amazing and wonderful. Thank goodness for the love of wine!

Knowing our way around the place

We were back for the third time to the Multnomah County Library to help push our way through more material! Sunday, February 28 four of us had the priviledge of working right in the heart of things at the Central branch in Circulation, right next to the regular staff. It kind of went right to our heads. We were even trained on how to label media! DVDs, CDs, audio books - all of them needed a RFID tag (Radio Frequency Identification). Then we scanned each item into the system and gave each one a big yellow Sharpie swipe across their spine. One after the other after the other! We made some great progress. I think some of us may have even been pretending that we actually worked at the library, which, for the right kind of person, could be a dream come true.

Trees for You and Me!

Hop on your bike and cruise the bike trail that runs along I-205, and just south of Hogan Road you'll see a pretty little ridge with oh, I don't know, about 156 new trees planted on it. Wait five to ten years and prepare to be amazed! The vision of many, many people led to a Friends of Trees project to create the I-205 forest right along that very same spot. Improving on the damage done to the surrounding neighborhoods when the highway went in, everyone is now pitching in and planting trees!

Friends of Trees really is something special - planting in neighborhoods and in green spaces and teaching the ins and outs of raising happy, healthy trees. And lots of 'em. We did a bit to help the effort on Saturday, February 20 in the sparkling sunshine. Two take-away tips: 1. When planting trees be sure to loosen up the roots that have wrapped around themselves in the pot (this wrapping is known in the business as "the spiral of death") and 2. Be sure to not plant the tree too low in the ground - the poor thing might drown and rot, and we can't have that. Happy planting!