How about some Charity work?

Typically, I plan my weekends which would involve running, cycling, gym, cleaning the house, car, cooking, laundry, invent something revolutionary etc. But every weekend I end up doing none of these, and sleep or watch TV instead. Last weekend I did something a whole lot different.

I try to do my part for charity. Come knock on my door asking for money. Mostly likely you'll end up walking away with a $20 bill in your hand. Every year I fall for this organization, who claim the $20 you pay them will go to homeless kids and you get free newspaper for 3 months. Its a pain, I don't read news papers and all I do is practice to throw the paper into the recycle bin. I called and told them to keep the money but not torture me by sending newspapers everyday. They responded saying its against company policy to not torture people. I mean not send the papers. After 3 months I forget about it and again fall for it the next year.

And all of us do attend these charity events. The profit made from the ticket sales goes to charity organizations. None one knows how much goes or what it is used for in the end. To tell you the truth, writing checks and dropping dollar bills into jars is the most convenient way to contribute and feel good about it. All we spend is a few seconds, and we are done.

One my friends sent me a event which was going take place where you don't pay a single penny but you actually get to pack food for hungry kids around the world. The actual cost was two hours from my weekend. I went ahead and registered, as I knew I'll be watching TV and not do any of my so called 'planned' things. The packing location was in some sort of factory. I was trying to recollect if it said 'pack' or 'make' food for hungry kids. If it was the latter, there are good chances that I would be prosecuted for murder.

The task was pretty simple. All you had to do was put chicken (powder), veggie, oats and rice into a pack. Weigh it, seal it and put it in a box. We were given hair nets. I didn't think it was helpful as my thinnest hair ever managed to find a way through it and fall out. And we were given strict instructions on not to touch anything after we cleaned our hands. That was by far the hardest to follow.

We started packing and we were told not to spill as, it would have to go the garbage instead of a hungry kids plate. This reminded me of the times when my parents used to tell me not to waste food saying there are a lot of people who don't have food to eat. That's totally flawed according to me. There is no way that the food I couldn't eat, could be sent to someone hungry. Even if I served myself with the right quantity, the remaining untouched food would have to be thrown anyway. One of my friends followed this 'do not waste food' policy and is 50 pounds heavier than he supposed to be.

But there, all the food I did not spill, will go to hungry kids. I had never been so careful before in my life about not spilling anything. There were 125 of us packing. Surprisingly all of them were whites except 5 who were Desi's. And over half of them were kids. I guess the rest are too busy with their lives doing nothing or worst, not aware of such a thing. Since I know about it, I'll make sure my big mouth does a good job in spreading the word.

The packing process was much faster than I thought. It was like Mach 2. Every table were competing against each other. Unfortunately there was a mother-daughter in our team. Problem? Both were fighting. So it didn't make it any easier. It was planned out well as a whole and it resembled an assembly line. 

We packed for 1.5 hrs. Cleaned the mess we made, for the rest. After a long long time I felt really good for what I had done. Even better than donating ten grand. Later they told us how many food packets we had packed together. A mind blowing 25,000!!