Food for Moving Day
While home a few weeks ago, I had the chance to assist my parents with repacking food to provide through a Des Moines, Iowa based charity called the Freestore. My parents have been involved with this charity for many years (my dad was a founding member!)
While working with a client a few years ago at Freestore and my mom could hear her stomach rumbling, so my mom asked her when the last time she ate was. She said she had ramen the day before. That was it for my mother. She decided that people coming into the Freestore on moving day should have a meal available to them, since moving day is hard enough work!
Since then, my parents have been working with Food Donation Connection, an organization that connects restaurants with food donation opportunities. This allows local restaurants to reduce food waste and provide a meal to an individual or family coming through the Freestore.
Through Food Donation Connection, the Freestore has worked with local restaurants such as Caribou Coffee, Starbucks, Mimi’s Café, Outback Steak House and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Food Donation Connection provides food safety guidelines for the participating restaurants and recipients, including keeping the food frozen at all time, doing pick up during specific times in the restaurant.
On this day, we had donated food from KFC that we are repacking to take to the Freestore warehouse so that it can be given to clients interested in taking food with them on moving day.
I decided to make a little video!
There are a lot of volunteers besides my parents who make “Food for Moving Day” possible. The volunteers pick up and repack food from local restaurants and deliver it to the Freestore warehouse. From there, volunteer greeters can offer food to clients for moving day.
It was a great experience. I got to learn more about both of these charities and hope you do to!
Check out more Freestore videos on their YouTube channel or at www.thefreestore.org!
