Time to post an update on what's happening at the Washington D.C. SHARE. Sam Minor, jack of all trades and all around good guy, continues to show me the ropes at SHARE. Tuesday of this week, Sam showed me how to use a mechanized lift so I could help him reorganize all the pallets SHARE has. All the food SHARE buys comes on pallets and they have quite a few of them. Sam wanted to weed out the broken pallets and better organize the good ones so they didn't take up as much space. He also showed me how a forklift works in advance of the forklift safety course I'm going to take on February 1st.
Today, my lessons on how SHARE works continued. I got to play quality control inspector. Every shipment of food SHARE orders has to be quality checked to make sure the seller is providing what was promised. This morning, seven pallets of bagged onions arrived. I got to pull a random sack of bagged onions from each pallet, open the sack, and count out how many bags of onions were in the sack. Each sack was supposed to have 29 bags of onions. Most had 30 though one sack only had 25. Another thing I got to check was the quality of the onions. SHARE can have a major problem is a lot of the onions are bad as its customers will refuse them. In this case, all the onions appeared to be fine.
Another operation I learned at SHARE today was how to make the bags they use to bag potatoes. The bags are made of red plastic mesh. SHARE buys large rolls of the mesh. The mesh is put up on a roller at one end of a table. At the other end of the table is another roller with space running the length of the roller and a notch in it at one end. The person making the bags ties a knot in the beginning of the red mesh, puts the knotted end inside the notch on the roller, turns the roller so the red mesh starts wrapping around the roller, and keeps turning the roller until the mesh covers the length of the roller. Once that's done, the person takes a pair of scissors or wire cutters, and slices down the open space in the roller. This guarantees a consistant size red mess bag for the potatoes. Later, the red mess strips are tied at one end by another volunteer who then opens the bag at one end, and places it over the another bag. Eventually, they create a large stack of red mesh bags which people bagging potatoes can easy pull bags from. These bag stacks are then stored in large boxes until SHARE needs them to bag potatoes.
Tomorrow, I'll get to start learning how to supervise different groups of volunteers. SHARE expects to have quite a few as it'll be bagging Saturday. That's the day, SHARE bags items that have to be bagged such as potatoes or sweet potatoes. The groups vary enormously. Some have volunteered for years while others are totally new to SHARE. The person supervising the groups shows them what needs to be done, assigns them a table, and makes sure they bag the proper amount of food. Tomorrow, we'll be breaking down 50 pound bags of potatoes into 3 pound bags. Once the potatoes have been broken down into 3 pound bags, volunteers will place 20 3-pound bags of potatoes into the empty potato sacks. On Distribution Friday and Saturday, these sacks will be distributed in bulk shipments. SHARE also fills up large container boxes with the 3-pound bags of potatoes. These boxes are used to fill split orders such as an order calling for 9 bags of potatoes.
The time proven system works well. Come Distribution Friday and Saturday, SHARE will be able to hand out hundreds of pounds of potatoes very quickly to its customers. They in turn will take them back to their respective organizations where they'll deliver them to the people who ordered them as part of a standard food package.
If you think you might be interested in helping out tomorrow, please check SHARE's webpage for directions to the Bladensburg warehouse. Bagging starts tomorrow at 7 a.m. Volunteers are welcome to come by themselves or as part of a group. If you arrive at the warehouse and aren't sure what to do, just ask for Sam or Jingle, and they'll be glad to show you how it's done. I hope to see you at the warehouse tomorrow. Cheers!
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