Feed My Starving Children

This last week I did a stint at Feed My Starving Children in Eagan with a bunch of Minnesota co-workers.  There's no office here; we're all remote.  Originally we all thought there were five or six of us, but the total is closer to twenty.  Eight showed up for the event over lunch [Alteryx does give us a couple of days of paid leave to volunteer each year. Historically, I log them, but tend to make up all those hours and volunteer a lot more than 16.  That was the case at Thomson Reuters as well.  I will say, it's not back patting.  I'm not incredibly passionate about any one thing and I really respect people who are.  My area of focus is - and here you can see the disparate nature of it: kids with diabetes, kids with brain issues and cancer, adults with Alzheimer's, bikes for kids, food for kids, planting trees and clearing parks, medical services in Uganda, Movember which I don't miss with my porno mustaches, books for prisons, school supplies, food shelves, MS of course...ah, checking my LinkedIn for recorded memory: teaching kids Python, teaching teachers Python, teaching classrooms about tech jobs, hour of code, Garlough kids reading to me, teaching kids about economics and practical skills, coordinating volunteer services for several thousand coworkers, and putting in some volunteer hours on the corporate donation match and time match systems I originally created and maintained for more then a decade until we went with an enterprise system.  It's more about me and variety and meeting new people, so in the end it's a little selfish.]

I've done Feed My Starving Children a number of times.  2008 with a Thomson Reuters crew.  2013 with some of Aeryn's classmates [some of whom were coworkers at TR].  2013 again, and a few years around that watershed in both directions, as I worked with the TR Global Volunteer group to have FMSC come to TR so we could have a few thousand people volunteer instead of a few thousand people travel to the packing site.  They just drove a semi full of tables and tons of food and supplies down into the underground parking garage.  I specifically remember labeling bags the year I couldn't walk so well because of the busted hip and pins - e.g. probably 2012.

This was a particularly fun instance because there was a group of challenged adults from Dundas.  Maybe Epic Enterprises?  I think I heard that name while all the chatting was happening.  They were a great time.  Super friendly and really supportive of each other.  I spent more time on their line then on our Alteryx line as we firmed up our stations.  The majority of my time was heat sealing bags of food.

Here we are, busily packing.  I'm way over in that far corner of the photo.  I'm disappointed you can't see the blind co-packer on my line.  He was the most upbeat person I've met in a long time.  Cracked jokes, Didn't spill a grain. Told stories.  Made me smile the whole time.

Cleanup commences.

Cleanup well underway.  That woman near the incomplete packed food because it wasn't quite enough for a box was so nice.  A real joy to talk to. She's staff at Dundas.  

Here we all are post-packing.  I had my hairnet off already, although it's not like I have a lot of hair to net.  Was cool that Christina showed up.  She was my recruitment friend at Alteryx.  A year ago or so she was looking for a job after a stint at Kowalski's in Eagan where she worked with my kid [they even played board games together].  I put her in touch with a couple folks in the ML space I knew locally. However, eventually she went with Alteryx, which I'd been interested in because I knew a little about their product and found it super intuitive for non-coders.  So when I realized my time at VP needed to end, she was my reference.  It was good to realize some of the locals had been with the company almost seven years as well.  That means the commitment to a certain amount of remote work has always been there and isn't just a symptom of the covid era that will disappear the way some companies are trying to position it.  Anyway....great time.  I really need to get over there a bit more often.  It is uplifting to know my food was headed to Columbia to shore up malnutrition and starvation.

Feed My Starving Children

One of Eryn's classmates had a birthday party today.  We were all invited to Feed My Starving Children to package meals.  The kids are a little slower than adults usually, but they still packaged 58 boxes, or about 12,000 individual servings, for Thailand or Haiti.  I was originally on warehouse duty, folding boxes, swapping containers of rice and vegetables and moving packed boxes around.  It was a bit overcrowded in that department, however, so I switched to putting expiration labels on food bags.  It made me have flashbacks to labeling continuing education flyers for the nurses' association bulk mailings.

The second part of labeling a little boy joined me, age 6. He was a lot of fun and did a great job and made it go much faster as he was chatty.  We talked extensively about family and friends and school and after a while got around to the fact that his scooter turned into a Transformer, but it wasn't nearly as big as his father's Transformer.  That's right...his dad has a transformer bigger than a full-sized scooter.  His dad also lost the kid's Star Wars character on the video game console and claimed those that were left as his own.  The kid stated it was very mean.  I couldn't disagree, but lamented the general fallibility of computers.  And then we got to favorite books.  He told me his favorite book was about fish and scuba diving.  I asked if he wanted to be a diver or work with fish when he was older and he assured me he liked fish, but that the important part was that the book talked about Jehovah.  Pausing in his labeling, he leaned forward across the table and earnestly asked, "Does your daughter Eryn understand about Jehovah?"

I avoided the discussion on a technicality, and assured him Eryn did understand who Jehovah was.  Then we went right back to talking video games, soccer, summer activities, websites, and first grade.

Here's Eryn with her classmates/friends discussing the setup.


Ditto.  See that dress to  the right with the British flag on it?  That's a Doctor Who themed dress.  Very cool.


Food packing has started.


Eryn was in charge of soy.


My wife was in charge of bag sealing.  You had to be 18 or older. Here's someone younger than 18 explaining to her how it works.