Because our team works remotely, we don’t get many chances to spend time together in person. While grabbing a meal is always nice, we also like to look for ways to do something more meaningful as a group.
Supporting our community — whether that’s our coworkers, colleagues, or neighbors — is a core value for us. Volunteering gives us a practical way to help build a stronger community and to join others in work that matters. Especially since the pandemic, opportunities like this have also felt meaningful on a human level: they bring people together around a shared purpose and remind us that the needs in our communities are real and wide-ranging.
In January, three of us had the chance to do exactly that. Bart suggested that we volunteer at the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, and it turned out to be a rewarding way to spend time together while supporting an organization that does important work in our community.
For many decades, the Food Bank has been working to end hunger in North Carolina. It serves a large part of the state, working with more than 700 partner programs across 34 counties. Its mission is not only to provide food for people in need, but also to work toward long-term solutions to hunger.
The organization operates six branches across central and eastern North Carolina, and we volunteered at the Durham location.
During our volunteer shift, we joined a group of about 40 other volunteers in a long packing line. Our job was simple but satisfying: help assemble boxes of food that would go out into the community. At different points in the process, we packed items into boxes, moved them down the line, and broke down cardboard boxes to keep things moving efficiently.
It was organized, fast-paced, and surprisingly fun to be part of such a large group working toward the same goal.
By the end of the event, our group had packed hundreds of boxes of food. That kind of result made the morning feel even more worthwhile. After our shift, we kept the team outing going with lunch at Mezcalito.
Our volunteer session came on one of the last days the Food Bank was in that location. Since then, the Durham branch has moved into a new 64,000-square-foot facility designed to help meet rising needs in the community. It includes expanded room for volunteer work, trainings, and food storage.
For us, this outing was a good reminder that team time can be about more than meetings or meals. Volunteering gave us a chance to catch up, work side by side, and contribute to something bigger than ourselves.