[IB9] Voluntary work for the “Food Bank” action ||| Part 3

Anelė Brazaitytė -

Food bank is a charity organization, which collects donation in food products and allocate it to poor families, elderly and other people in need. The aim of this “Food Bank” organization is to provide people with information about those poor families, lonely mothers and elderly, suggest to donate any of long-term products for them, to grow mercy feeling in citizens hearts. As far as I know Food Bank action in our school’s IB history is quite a long time. In this action IB students participate twice a year and annually. Namely our generation, my class mates and I, participate in this action second time.

This and previous time there was a made-up timetable, which divided us into small groups and each group had their own period of time to volunteer. Then when particular group’s turn came up to work they are separated into different roles. Up to two persons share booklets for comers. Firstly they welcome people with nice greetings, then comes suggestion to participate in Food Bank action and in the end answering their questions or other reaction to buyer. Another role of volunteering in this action is to stand with boxes and thank for products that are donated by people. There is needed up to 4 people. One should take products and to sort them in boxes, another should mark what products were donated and third person should thank in appropriate way for products donated.

Personally mine expectation of 2014 Food Bank was positive, keeping in mind that it was my second participation in this action. Had it was my first time I participating there, I would have had more suspense feeling in my heart. I was expected to have opportunity to meet new people, to be useful in collecting food donation for poorer people, to advance self-confidence in encouraging people to be lavish, to spend more time with our classmates in social activities, to improve communication skills. And actually I was successful in taking part in this volunteering event. Next time most probably I would participate for a longer time, not only for several hours, but may be for two days. Not only I would donate more by myself, but also invite my friends to collect some money and to buy any of those long-term products.

Now after those two times I have participated in Food Bank I could summarize several of advantages and lessons that it gave to me. First of all, it gave me an experience on volunteering, gave an opportunity to meet new people, to find out how little do they know about products donated to this action and to introduce them with action more widely. I developed my communication, people understanding, team work skills. I improved my tolerance and debate skills and I believe so did my classmates.  

[IB9] Siauliai Didzdvaris Gymnasium park spring clean-up

Deividas Nekrašius -   

        In the end of March me and my classmates - Anelė Brazaitytė and Gabrielė Baristaitė, were invited to go and help to clean up the Didzdvaris park. We were assigned with different tasks such as raking and taking leafs away, thin out the bushes, pick up the litter from the ground. Over-all we, as a group, did pretty well because after our help in the area we were assigned to, was cleaned out and looked a lot better than in the beginning. Also we have benefited from this activity by learning more about the park of Didzdvaris because there was a person who told us about the park itself. Furthermore, there were supposed to be tea and porridge but it was not there. I think that the next time it could be organized a bit better and clearer. Over-all the whole cleaning up was both – beneficial and fun for us. We got the chance to clean up the park and listen to interesting stories about it.

Taking a picture before the upcoming hard work (we are on the left)