From helping harvest food in the garden to preparing meals in the kitchen to inspecting canned items in product recovery, our volunteers are key to the success of the Food Bank. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to help nearly 46,000 individuals each week.
We’d like to recognize kitchen volunteer Jim VanWinkle and Omni Hotel volunteers as our Volunteers of the Quarter! Congratulations! Your hard work does not go unnoticed.
Omni Hotels’ navy blue volunteer shirts reading, ‘Say Good Night to Hunger’ are a common sight in our product recovery area. With their shifts filling up a large portion of the warehouse, Omni volunteers always come in to the Food Bank with smiles and a good attitude.
In addition to Omni Hotels making donations to Feeding America through their Say Good Night to Hunger campaign, employees across the nation have also stepped up to lend a hand in food banks.
Omni Hotel volunteers have completed 162 hours of volunteer service helping inspect, clean and help package food items for Central Texas Families.
We would like to thank all of the Omni Hotel volunteers who have helped provide thousands of meals to families in need.
In the kitchen, Jim has become known as the meat expert helping process and cut hundreds of pounds of meat. Thanks to Jim, families have fresh, healthy meals that are prepared in our kitchen on a daily basis.
After retiring, Jim wanted to spend time giving back. His passion for cooking led him to check out the volunteer opportunities on the Food Bank website where he found our new kitchen volunteer opportunities.
“This is a place where I can do something I enjoy, I’m pretty good at it and I’m learning every day,” Jim said. “We produce thousands of meals for people and there’s no other place you can do that.”
His first volunteer shift consisted of packaging meals for Central Texas families. He was hooked.
Now he comes in twice a week and has volunteered more than 140 hours in the kitchen since January. Though he brought his cooking skills to the kitchen, he has learned about commercial production, using the equipment, and kitchen safety.
“The thing you do is make 600 pounds of something and that’s really interesting,” Jim said. “I think the creative aspect of it is fun and we have a good time together and certainly the element of doing good for the community. It gives you that warm feeling, so that’s why I do it.”
