Wanted: Enthusiastic Volunteers in the Ashburn Area

More and more Northern Virginia schools are reaching out to Food For Neighbors to help combat teen hunger. After successfully rolling out food support to Stone Bridge High School, the nonprofit is poised to make the Ashburn area its sixth official food collection site. Below are the volunteer opportunities. If you want to make a big impact locally and if you reside in the neighborhoods feeding into Stone Bridge High School, Broad Run High School, or Rock Ridge High School, you are a perfect volunteer candidate!

Leadership Positions: To learn more, please contact Karen Joseph, karen@foodforneighbors.org.

Area Manager (AM): The AM provides leadership in a specific region, acts as a liaison between schools and Food For Neighbors (FFN), and works with the FFN Executive Director to determine need and growth in their area. The AM provides support to the Red Bag Dropoff Coordinator and school pantry coordinators and also interacts with the Event Coordinator and the Driver Coordinator to ensure the success of Red Bag Events, which are held on select Saturday mornings five times per year. This role requires the use of technology such as Google and Gmail.

Red Bag Dropoff Coordinator: The Red Bag Dropoff Coordinator delivers initial Red Bags to homes of community members when they first sign up to donate food. (Drivers deliver subsequent bags when picking up food donations.) This person uses a mobile app to get each donor’s address, record the dropoff, and add comments helpful to future volunteers who collect donations.

Event Coordinator (EC): The EC organizes the bimonthly Red Bag Events and works directly with the AM for their region. Event coordination includes managing all event supplies, coordinating the volunteer sign-up process, working with the host school point of contact for space availability and equipment, setting up the event, and communicating post-event thank-yous. The EC works with the AM and school pantry coordinators to deliver filled bins of food to participating schools. There are five, Saturday morning Red Bag Events each school year. This role requires timely communication via emails and text.

Driver Coordinator (DC): The DC works with the Driver Manager, which is an already-filled position on the FFN Executive Team, to provide training, communication, and support to FFN drivers. This role requires enough space to store the area’s Red Bags (unless delegated to others) as well as the proficient use of mobile apps such as Gmail and AppSheet. The DC provides oversight during Red Bag Events on select Saturday mornings five times per year.

Red Bag Food Donors: To donate food, visit https://www.foodforneighbors.org/red-bag-program/.

Donating food via the Red Bag Program is very easy!

• Request a Bag: This week, please visit https://www.foodforneighbors.o... to register as a food donor. A volunteer will drop off a Red Bag with a tag listing requested shelf-stable foods and five Saturday morning collection dates throughout the school year.
• Fill Your Bag: Shop for the listed foods.
• Leave Your Bag Out: On the requested Saturday mornings five times per year, put your food donations in your Red Bag, and leave the Red Bag on your doorstep. A volunteer will collect your donations and leave you a new Red Bag for the next collection.

Other Volunteers: To sign up, visit https://www.foodforneighbors.org/get-involved/volunteer/.

Drivers: On select Saturday mornings five times per year, drivers follow a given route to pick up Red Bag food donations left on community member doorsteps, weigh the donations, record them in a provided application, and deliver them to the Ashburn food collection and sorting site.

Sorters: On select Saturday mornings five times per year, sorters go to the Ashburn site to unload donations from driver vehicles, sort them by type into storage bins, and/or deliver bins to participating schools.

Your leadership, food donations, and volunteer support help Food For Neighbors provide students access to a reliable food source. This helps students remain in school, as there's less pressure to work long hours to provide for themselves and/or their families. It also helps them stay focused when they're in school, as hunger is not interfering with higher thinking. Longer term, the benefit of being better students increases the likelihood that they'll be successful members of the community, which lifts up everyone.

As one school social worker shared, “...having access to food to provide to teenagers who are hungry during the school day has been impactful in many ways. The Food for Neighbors program has allowed us to provide grab and go snacks to high school students who are often hungry. In addition, having food available for kids to grab in between classes and after school, has helped some kids focus more, has helped some kids when they aren’t feeling well and need to put something in their stomach, and has helped some kids with their mood. The most significant impact this resource has had is that it has helped destigmatize food insecurity as we open this up to all students….I can’t say it enough—Thank you Food for Neighbors for bringing together the community, who so often wants to help but doesn’t know how, and organizing the support, in such a way that so many families in need are being reached.”

Food For Neighbors: Hunger Is Closer Than You Think