To celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday and give back to the community at the same time, almost a dozen members of Sigma Chi and 16 members of Alpha Phi helped package food Tuesday night at FOOD for Lane County (FFLC) to send out to thousands of needy families throughout Eugene and neighboring cities. Although both groups had daunting tasks in front of them, the men with a 540 pound box of cereal to portion out and the women with tubs of restaurant leftovers to slop into bags, all of them seemed to find a way to make it fun.
This is the third year that the University chapter of Sigma Chi has worked with FFLC, and although they also participate in community service projects with other organizations, they felt that FFLC would benefit from their help, especially during the holiday season, said Scott Wolfe, a University sophomore and the fraternity’s community service chair. Cristine Whitney, a University freshman and member of Alpha Phi, agreed that this kind of community service is important this time of year, but said that her sorority sends a group of girls to FFLC every Tuesday night to help out.
“This is my first time doing this,” Whitney said. “But one of my friends said it was a fun thing to do with friends, so I’m excited.”
FFLC, which was founded in 1984, is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating hunger in Lane County by providing food to families who don’t have the means to buy it or grow it themselves, said Sheyla Norte, FFLC’s volunteer coordinator. FFLC is Oregon’s second largest food bank, and in addition to receiving donations of food and money, they also actively collect, rescue, grow, prepare and package food and distribute it to their network of over 100 social service agencies, Norte said.
“One in five people in Lane County depends on the services we provide at FOOD for Lane County,” Norte said. “We really want to encourage long-term awareness of this problem.”
Although FFLC does not give their food directly to Lane County’s needy families, it is the hub of the food distributed to the social service agencies that reach out to these families, Norte said. Each week, FFLC recovers about three tons of perishable food from restaurants, the University resident halls and other businesses, which volunteers like the members of Sigma Chi and Alpha Phi helped package into four-person meals and box up for distribution.
“We’re doing whatever they need help with,” Wolfe said. “We’re here to make the process easier.”
Dan Budd, the manager of FFLC’s 3,000 square foot commercial kitchen, said that although hunger is a problem in Lane County all year round, many homeless shelters see a sizable increase in the need for food during the winter. With the students’ help, Budd said he hoped to package a majority of their perishable food donations and get them out to hungry people as soon as possible.
Because of the immense need in Lane County, Norte said that donations and volunteers are essential to FFLC’s success. Norte said that fortunately, FFLC has a good relationship with the community, and the University in particular, which makes it easy to find willing volunteers.
“We have about 1,200 volunteers per year,” Norte said. “Without their support, we wouldn’t be here. We couldn’t do our work without them.”
Kyle Kobelin, a University junior and member of Sigma Chi, said that he enjoyed working in the kitchen with his fraternity brothers. As he and two other Sigma Chi members stood around a stainless steel table, doing the monotonous job of securing dozens of bags of cereal with red twist ties, they laughed and enjoyed one another’s company while doing something Kobelin said he considers worthwhile.
“With 90 guys in our fraternity, it’s easy to go out and build fences, do manual labor,” Kobelin said. “But it’s fun to do something different.”
Wolfe said that Sigma Chi has had a good relationship with FFLC for the past three years and that they were excited to help out.
“We want to create awareness for this kind of issue,” Wolfe said. “We figured this would be helpful thing to do at this time of year.”
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