The Reality
There’s basically four jobs you can do when you volunteer with We Don’t Waste (not including setting up and breaking down the market, which everyone works together on).
You can work the check in table. That is verifying that the participants have a reservation, and checking them in to the system so we can keep track of how many families we’ve served (an average market serves 400 families, 2,000 - 3,000 people).
You can work the food tables where customers shop, making sure that the tables are stocked, and that customers take the right amount of each item (every item has a limit to ensure that all participants have the opportunity to shop the item).
You can work the market entrance and assign families that need a shopping cart to a volunteer working a cart. Lastly, you can volunteer to work a shopping cart, which involves following a person or family through the market, helping load their items into the cart, pulling the cart for them, and then following them to their car or house (when its close) and unloading the items for them.
Carts is the job I most prefer.
I prefer it for two reasons. One, it is the most active and physically demanding of all the jobs. It requires 2.5 hours of constant moving, walking, and occasional lifting.
Second, I love it because it gives me the opportunity to interact with the people who come to our markets, and it allows me to get to know a little bit about them.
The demographics of the people who come to our markets is diverse. Young and old. Singles and families. Citizens and immigrants. Housed and unhoused. And everything in between. The question I ask most people is “where are you from.”
A young man with his baby girl from Afghanistan, in America attending college.
A very young girl rom Spain, shopping for her whole family who presumably couldn’t make it to the market because they had to work.
A mother and grandmother from Ethiopia.
A young girl born in Colorado, but whose parents immigrated from Kenya.
A young man no older than me with a baby girl who told me he walked from Venezuela with his wife (his daughter he priorly exclaimed was born in Colorado). It took them 2 months, and they had to cross the dreaded Darién Gap.
An elderly overweight woman from Colorado with health complications.
A family from Panama.
A 37 year old man from Vietnam, who’s lived in America for 10 years.
A lady from El Salvador who’s been in America for 30 years, in Colorado for 20 of them.
A young unhoused couple and their dog, from Colorado, living out of their car.
A Native American Man and his wife.
Two friends, a male and female, the woman carrying her beautiful 7 month old baby girl, who came to America from Egypt 2 years ago.
An elderly woman from Colorado shopping for herself, her 18 yr old grandson, his 17 year old girlfriend, and their infant. All of whom live with her.
A handful of families from various parts of Mexico.
A young American woman with 5 kids, 3 of whom are special needs.
These are the people we serve. These are the people whose lives we make a little bit easier by providing them with free food and baby supplies (WeeCycle partners at all We Don’t Waste Markets to provide free diapers, formula, and occasional extras such as winter coats, blankets, toys, and books for children). These are the people who we make feel a little bit more welcomed, by being kind and offering our help to them.
And in turn they are kind, generous, and grateful whenever they are at our markets.
These are the people I get to know just a little bit whenever I work a shift. And these are the people that remind me that no matter where you come from in the world, or what your hardship is, that all you want is to be fed, cared for, and welcomed into society.
And these are the people that remind me that every effort by the news, politicians, and lobbying groups, to make us think otherwise, is absolute horse shit.