MD’s OC Food Bank Club

STUDENTS ESTABLISH OC FOOD BANK CLUB

When opportunities to physically volunteer in-person were greatly limited due to Covid gathering restrictions, a group of Mater Dei students acted and got creative. First, they made Christmas Cards to accompany meals given to senior citizens at Oasis Senior Center. Then, they created a new club called the Mater Dei OC Food Bank Club to sustain local outreach. The club is focused on volunteering in the community to help ensure local persons in need have access to food. The club is led by juniors Emmi Webb and Lucia Howald.

“Some challenges that we had as students trying to volunteer during the pandemic, were finding an organization that would allow minors to volunteer. Due to the pandemic, more and more organizations were being selective about who they would let volunteer. At the time, the CDC still did not know how COVID-19 would transmit through children. Therefore, they only allowed people over 18 to volunteer. After asking seven organizations, the CAPOC (Community Action Partnership of Orange County) said yes and allowed us to partner with them,” said Emmi.

In January, members of the club, which totals 95 students, volunteered at The OC Food Bank, a program of CAPOC uniting communities to end hunger and malnutrition by partnering with more than 300 local charities, soup kitchens and community organizations. The students worked on the assembly line boxing food for low-income senior citizens in need.

Emmi shared, “we made boxes, placed non-perishable foods in them on the conveyor belt, and taped the boxes up. We did this for two hours and made 350 boxes collectively. The boxes that we made were then shipped to low-income senior citizens across Garden Grove.”

Beyond this very successful day, Emmi and Lucia plan to expand their club’s engagement in the community and have another event in June at the Garden Grove Food Bank. Mater Dei’s robust club program offers over 85 active clubs to meet the unique needs of our students. As a result of the pandemic, Emmi and Lucia were committed to establishing this new club on campus.

“We felt that there was a disproportional amount of people with food insecurity and we wanted to do something more than just have a food donation. We wanted to be active in our service to our community. There was also not another club that actively fits these needs like ours,” said Lucia.