Erica Wittenbrook
Instructor Muldrow
ENG 1101
13 October 2014
Hunger Relief For The Needy
For as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about helping people. Any opportunity to perform an act of kindness, be it large or small, is thrilling to me. Needless to say, of the many goals I have for my life, among the most important is my desire to provide help to those in need through my commitment to service. As a college requirement I was able to gain experience by volunteering my time at Alive Ministries and The Big Kitchen Soup Kitchen. I participated in these programs, which I enjoyed very much. During my time at the Soup Kitchen and Alive Ministries I assisted in preparing meals, cleaning dishes and meeting new people. I realized that we are all humans who are reflections of the human race regardless of our economic backgrounds. In essence, I realized something I already knew subconsciously: every individual is equally deserving of help in his or her time of need and that it could easily be me in dire need. It is this realization based on my experience feeding the hungry that has confirmed my plan to one day volunteer more often. It is my goal to dissect both the similarities and the differences of the two places that I volunteered at and to show how each one affected myself and the people who I impacted by this service.
The opportunity I had to volunteer my time at two different locations has impacted my life tremendously and has made me realize not everyone is as fortunate as I am. The article states, “Efforts to prevent people from becoming homeless has increased dramatically since 2009.” (Shinn, S324) I volunteered at a food pantry called Alive Ministries and a soup kitchen called The Big Soup Kitchen and they both share similarities and differences that I will focus on. For instance, the food pantry is located in a warehouse in Marietta and the soup kitchen is an actual kitchen available to the public located in Marietta. Both of these places focuses on helping the needy, however, at the food pantry the people you serve are anonymous and the soup kitchen the people are present. The food pantry distributes canned goods to people in need, whereas the soup kitchen I volunteered at provides home cooked meals for people in need. As I volunteered my time at both of these organizations I was impacted for different reasons. The food pantry and the soup kitchen were both generous organizations that don’t discriminate against anyone, and knowing that the canned goods and the home cooked meals were helping people in need is a joyous feeling.
In addition to these differences, there are similarities as well. The soup kitchen and the food pantry both provide food to people in need. Unfortunately, for many people these organizations are their last resort. At both the food pantry and the soup kitchen most of the people