Mandarin Mania! 2020 Lookback
Our Friday volunteers got more than they bargained for. Turns out Friday was Mandarin Mania. On Tuesday, our friends at Food Forward asked Adelante president Lilian Teran if our families would be interested in Madarin oranges. Some of you already know that our Lilian's favorite word is YES so the next question was how many boxes. Have you seen the cute little cardboard boxes that Mandarins come in at the store? So Lilian said 85 boxes - a lucky Adelante number because on Tuesdays we distribute fruits and vegetable boxes to 85 families at a local elementary school. Wonderful! 85 boxes scheduled for Friday delivery!
Friday morning, at the United Methodist Kitchen where we stage our operations, the delivery truck rolls up - these are not cute little boxes, they are full sized produce boxes - 40-50 lbs each! It took about 30 minutes just to unload and stack them. But that gave us time to consider what to do with 3400 lbs of Mandarins.🍊
Our volunteers began checking a few sample boxes to see what kind of condition the fruit was in - answer was excellent. Our leaders got on their phones putting out the word that we were able to share the bounty. So what happened to all those lovely Mandarins?
Volunteers made 14 bags for the Friday families, 12 bags for the meal delivery families, 26 bags for next week's family bags, and 50 bags to supplement Saturday's produce box distribution.
Tim Hagel came by from Safe Passage and picked up 20 boxes for their Saturday families, St. Pasqual's got 20 for their food bank, Many Mansions took 10, our downtown food bank got 6 boxes. The mountain of Mandarins was now just a hill...and today, we will see the rest out the door to other community groups helping families make ends meet in tough times.
Thank you to our volunteers, to our donors, and to our partners - especially the United Methodist Church of Thousand Oaks. We could not do our work without your trust in us and your giving hearts.❤️
Readers, you can help. Visit the website for donation and volunteer and shopping list information. Gracias! https://www.adelantecomunidadconejo.org/