Americorps Service Day

Andrea, a VISTA at Toledo Area Ministries, and Sarah Grace, a VISTA at Lutheran Social Services in Lima.

Today was one of several days per year deemed Americorps Service Days.

All the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbank Americorps members gathered in Columbus to do a variety of direct service projects as part of Americorps Week.



My project was helping at a community garden. Other groups cleaned up litter, sorted clothes and represented Americorps at a school fair.

Maureen, who works with me at the food bank in Toledo.

Rich, a supernice retired pastor and one of our newest VISTA members. He works at Compassionate Care in Sidney in Southwest Ohio.

Mitch, a VISTA at United Way of Hancock County in Findlay.

The project site, outside the Mid-Ohio Food Bank in Grove City, near Columbus.

Anthony (married to my good friend from high school, Erica) is a VISTA at Oaks Family Care Center in Lodi, near Cleveland.

Anthony is a natural leader and brought much-needed organization to our directionless final task, the watering of our newly planted garden.

Once we were finished in the gardens, we took a tour of the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, which recently moved into a new facility three times larger than its old space.





It was HUGE.

(Courtesy Mid-Ohio Food Bank)

And pretty.



A cool mirror outside the bathrooms thanked volunteers for their work.

After the tour, we joined the rest of the project sites for the "fun half" of the day at a little old single-screen movie theatre in Columbus, where we ate pizza and ice cream, and watched...



...The Princess Bride? Yep.



I have to say, Americorps Service Days, while its always enjoyable to spend a day out of the office, are a bit of a joke. It's nice to dig in the mud, do some direct service and especially to see all the people we don't see every day, but it's odd to specify a single day as a day of service when essentially EVERY day of this job is a service day...

Also, it seems more productive to work on a project in our own communities rather than drive two and a half hours to mainly stand around with not enough work for all of us at the same project.

And The Princess Bride? Good movie, but weird choice for a mandatory-attendance event. Even odder, since I heard Food Inc was in the running, which I would have preferred to watch and which would have made a lot more sense.

Ah well.

As you wish :)