Edward's Community Service Project

Community Food Bank Events

Attending the Community Food Bank event has been an experience that helped me realized how we (everyone) can do something to help our society. Social inequality is a reality, we see people with a lot of money and we also see people without having anything to eat or a place to sleep. If you would like to witness yourself what I have mentioned before, I invite you to pass by the Newark train station. if you go at night you would see a big number of individuals sleeping in the street in all crazy type of temperatures, hot, cold, rain, snow. Many of the individuals that see this people on the street tend to stereotype and belief that all those homeless people have some type of fault of their condition blaming them of drug users, thefts, alcoholics, people that do not like to work etc.… but they never thought about what is the real reason of them being on the streets. On the other hand, we have individuals that instead of criticism this people, try their best to help them to overcome their homeless situation.

I had the opportunity to attend the community food bank event where students from Kean University and Montclair State University worked together to pack all the different types of products that had been donated by companies like Walmart, Amazon, ShopRite, Target and other stores that are willing to donate some of the products that they would not be able to use.

After selecting and packing the products in different boxes we placed the boxes on top of pallets that would be ready be place in different trucks, so they can deliver those products to the places where are most needed.

My team member Maria asked the person in charge of the event “where does this food go”? “They go to the Salvation Army, shelters, and other places where people don’t have anything to eat.” Said the person in charge of the event. All of those donations help big time those individuals that have the need of food and water, and there are other products that can help them for their personal hygiene. Products such as: deodorants, soap, detergent, beauty products, and many other products that we all use daily.

Overall, I think that we can do things that can make a big positive impact on our society. Participating in the Community Food Bank event is a good example of Social Sustainability, where a number of strangers gathered together to work for a good reason, help our society. If we can get more people around the world to work together the results would be encouraging to get a better world and a healthier standard of living for our society.

Edward Rengifo
Sustainable Global Bus & Tech