Day 3 Adventures

Today we worked with an organization called Project Open Hands; their goal is to feed people who are too sick or otherwise disabled to feed themselves-many of their clients (the people they serve) are people who struggle with AIDS and its related symptoms. Walking through the volunteers' entrance is like walking into the kitchen or delivery area of any restaurant with people scrambling to get everything ready for the lunch rush. Our group was put to work right away, some of us moved big crates of fresh vegetables and others stocked the refrigerator with necessities and frozen Indian dinners donated from Trader Joe's. In addition to serving people in their homes and from within the facility itself; Open Hands operates a free grocery store, out of the facility, for their clients. Necessarily, much of our time was spent stocking the shelves so the many clients could all get their food for the week.

Open Hands is an organization driven, almost entirely, by volunteers. It has a smaller, paid staff who cook all the food for the 1000+ meals served each day and who manage the confused teenagers which made up the temporary staff. It's easy to let the scope of their activities slip by you. Working in an environment of this kind can only be experienced in a unique culture like San Francisco's because of the multi-cultural, sardine-tight atmosphere; the volume alone of people served by Open Hands would be a difficult thing to find in Salt Lake City. It was a different experience from one of working at a soup kitchen or rescue mission, everyone there was ready with a job to do and the rushed feel was unlike anything I'd ever experienced in serving around town at home.

Our group was only able to serve for the first part of the day so we spent the rest of it playing around at the beach near the church. Being San Francisco, the water was too cold to be approached safely and the air temperature could be described as arctic. But everyone had a lot of fun and it provided a much needed break in the last two days hectic activity.