Hope Center Pantry volunteers make a lasting impact by feeding the hungry in Brown County, Wisconsin. The pantry offers many different ways to volunteer. Here’s a good example. Cathy Harrison is not your typical volunteer at the Hope Center Pantry. She started about 10 years ago sorting, packing, and distributing food to the needy but now works behind the scenes. She spends her volunteer time on a computer.
Tracking Food & Monetary Donations
Cathy documents the client activity to track how many people Hope Center Pantry helps and the impact the pantry makes. This is critical to ensure that benefactors and organizations providing grants continue to contribute food, money, and time. As a result, Hope Center Pantry can assist more people.
Volunteering for Food Drives
Cathy and her husband, Tom, also pitch in when Hope Center Pantry needs extra help. For example, the annual Boy Scout food drive, Scouting for Food, brings in four pallets of food donations for Hope Center Pantry alone. Hope Center Pantry needs extra volunteers to process the nonperishable food donations from annual food drives.
“It’s a great feeling to help people in need and to do something worthwhile,” Cathy said. “Food is a basic necessity, and the need keeps growing, especially now that everything is getting more expensive. I chose to volunteer at Hope Center Pantry because it’s in my community, and I can see the immediate impact.”
Making Friends, Building Community
Cathy has met a lot of kind people by volunteering for Hope Center Pantry. Volunteers from seven Catholic parishes on the West Side of Green Bay support the pantry’s day-to-day operations. The seven parishes are the Quad Parishes of Annunciation, St. Joseph, and St. Jude, along with Nativity of Our Lord, St. Agnes, St. Patrick, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. However, volunteers are not required to be a member of one of these Catholic parishes.
Making a Lasting Impact
Contact us about volunteer opportunities or to schedule a visit to the pantry to experience volunteerism first-hand. The pantry is open 1-3pm Monday through Thursday at 505 Clinton St. Green Bay. Read the How You Help information to learn more. Volunteers provide an essential service to those in need in the Green Bay area. Thank you, Cathy, Tom, and all of the volunteers at Hope Center Pantry.