The Service Board has continued to find ways to stay active throughout the hardships of the pandemic. Most recently, the Service Board has been leading groups of Haverford students over to a local Jamaican church, the Memorial Church of God and Christ.
Oftentimes, Mr. Brian McBride leads the group over to the church, which is just a couple of minutes away from campus. This makes it a great place to participate in service during lunch, which is when most of the groups go over. Some groups have also gone early in the morning on Wednesdays.
These early morning trips are important because the mornings on Wednesdays are when the Church receives about 2,000 – 3,000 pounds of produce. The church runs a food kitchen where people from any zipcode with any background can come get food.
“It doesn’t matter where people come from or why they are coming for the food, it just matters that people get the help they need. That is the important thing,” said Pastor Daren Miller of the Jamaican church.
Arriving at the church, the group of boys funnel into the basement, where the food pantry is located.
“We then have our temperatures checked while we all put on gloves to handle the food,” Fourth Former George Vollmer said.
A typical job is unloading truckloads of produce on Wednesday. Students form a line to pass boxes into the basement. From there the boxes are unloaded and sorted into canned goods, fresh produce, desserts, bread, and other categories.
Even still, premade boxes are prepared to keep the line moving. Some days the pantry will have upwards of 20 cars, with multiple people moving through the pantry in under an hour, proving Pastor Miller’s point of “how important and how necessary the work we are doing is.”
Next year, the Service Board hopes to keep this connection with the Church and become more involved, having more and more students come out to help. It is important to see new faces as this kind of work is beneficial to anyone who is involved. Seeing students giving back to their community working alongside the workers at the church is truly heartwarming.
If after having read this article and you are not already interested in helping out at the church, Ms. Loos has been working on organizing a system so that rising Fifth Formers will have more options for parking in the Church lot.
You must be logged in to post a comment.