By Charlotte Murphy, IU Corps Intern
New this year, IU Volunteer Corps hosted a Fall Day of Service. On November 22 and 23, members of Volunteer Corps volunteered at Pantry 279 to distribute Thanksgiving meal boxes. This year, Pantry 279 was able to distribute 2,711 meal boxes to the Monroe County community. These boxes fed 20,374 people. IU senior nonprofit management major, Mary Moser, chair of the Volunteer Corps board, had a chance to volunteer and interact with the community at Pantry 279’s Thanksgiving event.
“I heard about Volunteer Corps when I was a freshman, and I interviewed to join the board. I have been on board since the end of my freshman year and this year I am the chair of the board, Moser said. “I feel like [Fall Day of Service] went well. Pantry 279 is a super well-run organization, and they had it like a well-oiled machine.”
Pantry 279 sets up at the Bloomington fairgrounds to assemble and pass out the Thanksgiving meal boxes due to the volume of community members. They have been doing Thanksgiving boxes every year since 2015, and each year gets bigger. Each person that came through had to sign up beforehand depending on their family size to establish how many items they could receive. It is set up very similar to a grocery store where you can come in and select which foods you want. Moser and many other volunteers handed out items during their shift.
“For my shift, I was handing out gravy packets and next to me was someone handing out potatoes, salt, and pepper,” Moser said. “Another person was handing out pie fillings and brownie and cake mixes. There were a bunch of different Thanksgiving food options.”
Something Moser noticed was the number of volunteers who weren’t students and how they reacted to IU students volunteering.
“Pantry 279 had so many volunteers themselves,” Moser said. “It was great to see students out there, but I talked to a lot of other people that were volunteering. I met a woman who was there volunteering with her church who had been volunteering for two days. The woman said that ‘it’s great to see students back again.’ For me this was cool because when I talked to people that didn’t know that Volunteer Corps had a connection to IU, I was glad they saw students. Because I am in a leadership role, it’s good for me to hear because we are doing what we said we are going to do and people are engaging, which is always great.”
Besides showing that students are engaging in volunteerism, Moser’s favorite part was seeing all the families that came in and knowing they made their holidays a little easier.
“I would say it was just nice to see all the families that were coming in and to be so excited that there were people there to help make that a smooth process,” Moser said. “The holidays are such a busy time of year and Thanksgiving is really the start of that. It’s nice to see people that are here to make this an easier process and not only was it easier for them, but the people were very grateful and happy that they were able to be there.”
In terms of success for Volunteer Corps, Moser was happy with the number of volunteers, however, there can always be more.
“I am just happy when I see people show up, but I think I will always feel like there is always room for more people to show up,” Moser said. “I was super happy to know that there were groups of people that were there representing Volunteer Corps but always in the back of my head I know that we can do more.”
If you’d like to do more within the community and volunteer with other members of Volunteer Corps, check out the Volunteer Corps website and follow their Instagram (@iuvolunteercorps).