By: Mariella Aletti

Why Do We Help?
In my last two years of high school, I signed up for the National Honor Society. There

were certain requirements those who signed up had to meet; you had to have a certain GPA and

you had to do about 30 hours of community service by the end of the school year. For me, my

main sources of community service hours were Youth Volunteers of Harrison Club at my high

school and volunteering at the local Harrison Food Pantry. While I was volunteering for service

hours to stay in the National Honor Society; I also ended up really enjoying my time

volunteering.

While the volunteering club got me my service hours it was somewhat sheltered in the

sense that we never met or interacted with any of the organizations we did drives or made things

for. On the other hand, in the food pantry, you see firsthand all the people in your community

who are struggling. It hits deeper when you have to look into their eyes and hold a conversation

with them knowing that you would have never even known about their struggles if you did not

need to complete service hours to have an extra certificate and medal at graduation.

My best friend Marianna also needed service hours for the NHS so we did most of ours

together. The food pantry was held in the local Girl Scout house, both me and Marianna had been

Girl Scouts in the same troop, and being back there I was reminded of our time there as Girl

Scouts a decade ago. I remember having heard back then that they used the back room and main

room for the food pantry, but I had no idea how it worked and it never crossed my mind again

until I began volunteering.

There was this whole other community that existed in my town that struggled to access

resources like food and the things they needed to survive.

By: Mariella Aletti

After about 3 hours of occasionally restocking the shelves of dry food like cereal and

pasta while also working one of the meat freezers and handing people whatever raw frozen meat

they needed, it was closing time. It had been a long day me and Marianna had driven over

directly after school and we hadn't even begun to think about starting our homework. Everyone

had left, including the people who came to volunteer; It was eerily quiet. Looking out the

windows showed a blanket of darkness, since it was now November the sun set much earlier and

I got the feeling that I was out late even though it was only about 7 pm. I was left with Marianna,

Catherine, and another lady who ran the Food Pantry with Catherine. Catherine was the woman

who ran the food pantry but she also used to run our religious school before she stepped down.

Catherine was always such a warm person and although she knew Marianna better than me

because she was friends with her mother she always treated me the same as Marianna, every time

we would see her she would give us each a big warm hug.

Catherine, Marianna, and the other lady who worked with Cathrine were in the process of

closing up the food pantry. Catherine had been turning off all the lights as we progressed through

each of the rooms and the hallways. We were chatting as we all walked outside ready to leave

and go home. Cathrine was in the process of closing the door when I noticed there was a woman

and what looked to be her son sitting on the steps outside. Everyone else seemed to notice them

at the same time that I did. They had their bags full of food from the food pantry spread at their

feet on the sidewalk. If this had been a day earlier in the season nothing would have been amiss,

but it was now well into the fall months where the temperature dropped awfully low at night.

Catherine stopped unlocking the door and approached them.

“Hi, are you two okay?” she asked.

By: Mariella Aletti

Me and Marianna both approached from behind her and I got the first look at their faces.

I recognized them from earlier. They had been one of the people who came into the food pantry

today. The mother was a sweet African American woman; she was bundled up in multiple layers

of clothing but even that wouldn't have been able to keep her warm in this weather. Her son was

also with her; he seemed to be in his early teenage years. He was also bundled up with jackets

and a beanie but not to the extent that his mother was.

“Oh! Yes, we- we’re just waiting for our ride,” the woman says with a shiver in her voice.

They had been out here this whole time. They must have been absolutely freezing. I wondered to

myself; why hadn’t they come back inside? It seems that Cathrine had been thinking the same

thing.

“You’ve been out here this whole time? You could have waited inside of course. Come

now, come inside.” She ushered them inside the Girl Scout house.

I helped grab their bags of food along with Marianna and the other lady. We all shuffled

back inside out of the cold.

The woman continued to talk to Cathrine reassuring her while we walked, “Our ride will

be here any second.” And when we got back inside, “He said he was only a few minutes away,”

while constantly looking down at her phone for any update.

Her son trailed behind her holding a couple of bags himself and once he got inside

Cathrine led them to the rooms where the pantry had been just 30 minutes ago. He set down the

bags and immediately slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. I saw that he didn't have any

gloves on. He stayed quiet for the most part, I think he may have been embarrassed by the

situation.
By: Mariella Aletti

Back in the main room of the Girl Scout house, they sat on a bench together while the

rest of us sat around the room. The walls were painted a creamy white color that was plastered

onto the bricks to make the room look enclosed in a way that resembled a basement. The room

was large and open and the metal foldable tables had been set up to line the walls now laid folded

up against the walls. That cardboard and dusty smell was something that had always permeated

the Girl Scout house. Thinking back on it, I bet the navy blue carpets were to blame for the

dusty, stale smell. The leftover Girl Scout equipment like the little wooden bridge they made us

walk across when we transitioned from daisies to brownies was pushed to the edges of the room

looking almost abandoned and tossed aside.

A ding sounded in the room and the woman looked down at her phone. Their ride was

here. The woman stood up slowly as if she was being weighed down by something. We all bent

down to pick up some of the bags and trailed outside to the waiting car.

The woman turned to us, “Thank you all so so much.”

Catherine responded, “It was nothing, sweetie. You have a good day now.”

Catherine is such a sweet lady and she does so much for the community. I admire her and

her involvement over the years because it really shows that some people do care about their

communities and would go out of their way to help people. Although, I do think that people

should not have to. These people should not have to struggle to put food on the table because of

their economic situation. There is only so much volunteering and community service that can be

done and it may never be enough to reach everyone that needs it. I think that food and resources

that are needed to survive should be a right. No one should have to wonder where their next meal

comes from or confine their food to rations. Not having steady access to food or resources is a

very frightening situation where it is truly life or death.

By: Mariella Aletti

For me, I enjoy community service so much especially in my local community because I

come to know what is occurring in my community and how people may be struggling. For the

most part, the people who visit the Food Pantry are older, elderly individuals or families. I think

the type of people and the amount of people who attend food pantries is a key indicator that there

is something fundamental that needs to be fixed in our society. This is a problem that we must all

come together to fix and figure out how to fairly distribute resources and wealth in a way where

a group of people are not struggling to survive.