Why We Want Them Back

It was Week of Caring, and Wells Fargo Trade Services was working the Clothing Program. They sorted and hung donated clothes, enough to keep the Clothing Program’s doors open the next day.

The Clothing Program can be quiet work, most of it in the room behind the store. It’s an opportunity to talk to staff and ask questions, a good gig for chatting with co-workers while getting something done. But in spite of the quiet, it’s crucial. We’ve had days with no group help and it meant closing our doors early.

The same day, Chevron Energy Solutions staffed the Dining Room. The environment at St. Anthony Dining Room is almost the opposite of the Clothing Program: fast, furious, and noisy.  The Chevron Energey Solutions group spends their days stretching energy efficiency, and it showed. They served meals and bussed trays and kept up with our demanding rate of 12 trays per minute.

“It was a great opportunity to work with an organization that has such a positive impact and influence within our SF community,” they told us. “All our volunteers had a wonderful time and said they would go back for future events.”

That’s good, because we intend to invite them back. There are several essential tasks that must be done before the holidays hit, and a whole menu of Holiday Projects that make it possible for us to celebrate with our guests.

Corporate work teams are an important part of our clever plot to win the hearts and minds of the entire city. They talk about their experience to the co-workers who couldn’t come. They come back with other teams: colleagues, church groups, families, friends. They come back on their own. They invite us to their workplace giving events and give us chance to tell yet more people why people get poor and what St. Anthony’s is doing about it. They organize co-workers to collect socks and toiletries and all those things we always run out of and always need.

We need the help. We want the friends.

If you want to organize a volunteer team at your company for a holiday project, call me at 415-592-2737 or email atrowbridge@stanthonysf.org.