Earlier the year, I volunteered at a food pantry. I put in ten hours, and it was an incredible experience. I learned a lot and gained new perspective on things. I worked at the River Food Pantry, which is located relatively close to the Dane County Airport. Each time I volunteered, I had to take an hour bus ride back and forth, which was very time consuming. Yet, I enjoyed it thoroughly. They have this great system set up to make things as easy as possible. I only had one job to do, which was to hand out certain foods. Each person paid a certain dollar amount and gets to choose between a couple different items depending on the station. I was in charge of the items very few people actually wanted. I had to get rid of frozen vegetables, a frozen pizza, and a gravy. Most people wanted the pizza, so that was easy to get rid of. My eyes were opened by how many people had to deny the frozen things because they didn’t have freezers or things that I grew up with that I take for granted. I grew up in a middle class family, so we never had to go to food pantries, we never had to worry about buying certain foods and them going bad because we didn’t have a freezer. It was quite eye opening, and I definitely am more interested in helping out in the future. This non profit organization was very well set up, and everyone working there was very nice. They did employ people who either just got out of jail, of were working there instead of being in jail. so that was also eye opening. I had never really been around people that had been in that kind of trouble. I had been protected most of my life and I was always told how bad some of those people are, but after talking to a very small sample size, they were very nice and helpful. They worked their stations just like anyone else, and I’m sure they did a good enough job. It wasn’t anything hard. The hardest part of working at the food pantry was clean up and set up. There was a lot of moving everything around, there was a lot of mopping and that sort of stuff. Everyone had a job, and it went efficiently and smoothly. The River Food Pantry was a warehouse that was used to store a lot of food, but it also sold clothes and books and other things like that. They wanted to allow those who were down on luck to have every opportunity to get back on their feet. It was very powerful to work there, When I handed the food out, there were a lot of people that had I saw them on the street, I would not have guessed they needed help, and it definitely changed how I see a lot of people. IT just goes to show that you never know a person simply but knowing surface information.