Common Heart intern, Grant Summerhill, worked his first mobile food pantry with us last week. He wrote about his experience…

There’s something about taking care of our neighbors, especially working alongside them in our community’s struggle with food insecurity, that gets me up in the morning. Being able to work out on the front lines doing something good for the community really made my day better and I hope it made theirs better too. On Tuesday when I participated in the Common Heart mobile food pantry at Liberty Hill Missionary Baptist Church, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had working with the community and at Common Heart. My job was to help fill out applications and take care of our neighbors. The entire day was very fast paced starting from the jump, but I really enjoyed it. 

Since my role required me to interact with our neighbors, I had the opportunity to engage with a good amount of them and establish a strong foundation for the relationships that I hope to build during my time at Common Heart. We had up to 150 neighbors come out to get their groceries which was very surprising to me due to the fact that I have never seen this many people at an event like this. That alone made me very happy to see and pushed me to engage more and really get to know our neighbors. 

Common Heart volunteers have a very special energy that they bring into the lives of the food pantries and being a part of it makes engaging with our neighbors much easier. All of the volunteers were very welcoming and had an efficient system which helped me feel comfortable when approaching and connecting with our neighbors. Along with that, we had up to 30 hard working, dedicated volunteers who took the time out of their morning to help take care of our neighbors and continue being advocates in our community’s challenges with food insecurity! 

I thought this was a very successful food pantry and a great experience for me. Common Heart volunteers did a fantastic job making sure the needs of our neighbors were taken care of in a timely manner. At the end of the day all I can say is thank you. Thank you to Common Heart, our neighbors, and our volunteers. This is an experience I will never forget and I hope to come back and participate in another food pantry in the near future.