I had to complete a project where I volunteered and observed a social service agency that helps homeless and/or hungry, and I choose The Blessing Center.  This is an agency located in Redlands, about a mile from the University. This organization helps both the hungry and those in poverty. Their goal is “to help alleviate poverty and despair through multi-faceted resourcing of poor and disadvantaged families and individuals who are hurting, in need of food, clothing, medical and dental care, job resources and many other needs.” This goal description also gives a little insight into what type of services they provide and for whom.

The Blessing Center provides a food bank every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. For these three days, the volunteers at The Blessing Center only have two hours to distribute food boxes to upwards of 400 families, with Tuesday’s typically being their most popular day. These boxes contain food provided by local companies and farms, all of which has been donated. 

Since they cannot give out boxes everyday of the week, they do provide sack lunches every day. This is a little easier to obtain, all you have to do to receive a lunch is to sign in at the front desk. These lunches typically include items that will perish faster, but also easy to eat foods, such as sandwiches and bananas. The number of people that come in for a lunch is around 20 people, which is much less than the amount that come in on food bank days.

The Blessing Center has its own “store” full of donated items. Clients can come in each day to pick out a different outfit for free. The criteria for receiving clothing is just like the sack lunches, where they only have to sign in at the front desk. But the clients are restricted as to how much time they are allowed in the store and how much clothing they can take, which varies for single people and families.

The Blessing Center provides many services to make sure people can get on their feet a little easier. Some of the services include: GED courses, AA meetings, resume classes, life coaching classes, computer classes, and job coaching classes. All of these services plan to help people succeed in landing a job and being successful in their careers.

The Blessing Center provides a medical and dental clinic that is free to everyone who does not have health insurance. Here people and families can sign up to be an applicant for the clinic, the only requirement is that they do not have any form of health insurance. This clinic offers general dentistry, such as fillings and cleaning, as well as health screenings, primary care, and minor surgeries.

I spent most of my time in clothing organizing the clothes and their sorting system, but I also spent some time with the food distribution and observing. While volunteering I looked around a lot and observed what was happening at the center. While some days there wasn’t much going on, I still got a feel of how the clients and volunteers were treated and received a little feedback from both.

I don’t think that I actually spent enough time in my organization to be able to fully understand how they operate daily, but I did learn a lot about how important volunteers and donations are. This organization would not survive without the help of private donations. All of their food and clothing is donated, so they wouldn’t have to spend any money on purchasing these items. Without volunteers, they probably wouldn’t have enough money to spend on salaries for their workers, especially those in the medical profession for the clinic.