MEETING NOTES– VOLUNTEER GATHERING – JULY 23, 2015

Food items

  1. Meal consists of: t/c & pbj sandwich, 1 fruit, chips, dessert, hard boiled egg, carrots, raisins and scripture. Extra item like granola bar or pb crackers can be added when we have them. Items are often stored in the walk-in and the back cabinets that are closed up to make sure that rodents are kept at bay.
  1. Desserts – if no individual wrapped dessert is available (Foodbank items), cookies will be bagged. Please use 2 per serving and use the small snack size zip locks. It is always ok to bag extra for the next team if you have extra helpers.
  1. EGGS – if no hard boiled eggs are available for your meal:

-Boil some if you have time. The stove is plugged in outside by the BBQ pits, pots in the cabinet nearest the front door. Guidelines for boiling are in the 2nd drawer nearest the door.

-Use a cheese stick as a substitute. Please don’t add these to meals as an extra item due to cost.

-We use approximately 120 doz eggs a week. Please bring 1 doz eggs monthly when volunteers come in for prep or delivery. This will help keep our costs down.Date, mark the carton “raw” and place in cooler. Markers are in the drawer.

  1. For Prospects Courtyard and Guadalupe Community Center – Please use apples or oranges for these meals. Most of these lunches are stored for later and the bananas will be bruised in the process. Applesauce is also a good shelf-life item. When we have it, feel free to use as a fruit item for bagged meals.
  1. Fruit -All teams should take 1/3 of each type fruit to runs to apartments and parishes when we have all 3 type fruit available. When we serve from the truck it’s important to give our clients the benefit of choice of fruit.
  1. Monday and Tuesday teams at times have experienced shortages of menu items……resupply truck delivers on Wednesday mornings.The commissary team has made adjustments on how we order and we shouldn’t have shortages here forward. Boiled eggs are an exception, not because shortage of raw eggs but shortage of boilers.
  1. Prep teams should prepare only the amount of meals scheduled on the calendar. Commissary team places supply orders weekly based on the total meals to be served for the next week. Prepping more meals could potentially results in shortages of menu items for runs that follow.
  1. Most prep teams empty the trash, flatten and remove cardboard and sweep the floor. Many also mop. But many still leave their trash. We encourage teams to leave the kitchen clean. Save the small banana “trays” to use for on the truck. Having these can be convenient in packing the truck! Keep big ones for Haven (Prospect and Guadalupe) deliveries. All other boxes should be broken down and recycled.
  1. Juice boxes are one item that is fairly expensive. Please limit these on the delivery to small children (i.e. the ones that might spill a cup of lemonade).

Communication items

  1. White board updates – we will attempt to keep the information here FRESH and relevant so please check it before you start prep. You can leave notes here too if you like. Please add a date to your comments so we know when they were written.
  2. Tracker has all the phone number and emails for team contacts. Instructions for logging on are posted on our website

New ideas

  1. Starting a monthly newsletter to keep volunteers up to date
  2. Website updates: photos, team news – We would like to gather photos or short stories from the teams serving. We want the website to have current information. Please take photos when serving and forward to .
  3. Changing our serving locations to spread out our meals – 1,3, & 4 Sunday lunches
  4. Condiment crew: Sometimes teens who need community service help with making the packets. We discussed homebound taking on this ministry. The idea hasn’t been implemented yet. Maybe a retirement home project?
  1. September recruiting meeting –The Core is looking to increase its membership. We are trying to get the word out now to our volunteers so they can be considering how they might take on a specific MLF job. Big and small jobs are available, with most having a monthly commitment. We are planning to have another meeting on a Saturday in September in which we will officially invite interested people to step up. We know that a personal invitation is the most effective way to get volunteers, so please keep this in mind.

Immediate needs

-Volunteer coordinators

-Clothing coordinator

-Commissary staff

-PR people