On Saturday, I was lucky to help out at La Clinica del Cariño’s annual food drive for the migrant farm workers who come to our area to pick cherries. Most of these farm workers are migrants who have arrived for 6 weeks from California for the cherry harvest before moving on to Washington or other areas. They have their families with them and spend their last paycheck from California on gasoline to get here. That means that for their first two weeks here before their first paycheck for picking cherries, they frequently don’t have enough money for food.
A few years ago, La Clinica’s Health Promoters stepped in to make sure the farm workers aren’t going hungry–especially their children. This year, as funding dipped for La Clinica, our program Nuestra Comunidad Sana filled in as volunteers to coordinate the drive.
This weekend, I helped sort and bag over 3,000 lbs of food. A HUGE thank you to employees of the Mid Columbia Medical Center, who donated more than 1,000 lbs of food. We also had a lot of local stores donate food. One of the best things about this food drive is that the food we collect is healthy and culturally appropriate–rice, pinto beans, flour, tortillas, tomato sauce, bananas, carrots, lettuce, halepeños, and avocados.
For two hours on Saturday afternoon at City Park in The Dalles, a small group of volunteers from La Clinica and Nuestra Comunidad Sana distributed 119 bags of food to feed 315 adults and 222 children. With some food leftover, my family drove with Health Promoter Toña Sanchez to Mosier and distributed 73 more bags of good at four orchard camps to hundreds of people. All in all, a great day’s work!
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- On Friday night, seven volunteers divvied up dry food at El Buen Pastor church in The Dalles
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- My daughters had the perfect job–opening plastic bags to put in fresh vegetables
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- My husband supplied his muscles to help move bags and boxes
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- Beans and rice donated by folks at Mid Columbia Medical Center
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- Onions, beans and rice purchased with donated money
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- Canned vegetables went fast
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- Luckily, the rain didn’t effect the food drive
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- My daughters and I helped divide some food right before the food drive began
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- Rosauers and Safeway donated bags for use in distributing food
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- Hundreds lined up patiently to collect their food bags
[...] flyers covering project themes in 11 community events. I previously blogged about the Food Drive Toña and I organized in The Dalles in June, which was one of these events. We estimate that [...]