The Investment Report : Pantry Packers

In Israel, offices, schools and many businesses are closed on Election Day. All day. Elections are taken very seriously here and with turnouts in the high 60’s and 70%, maybe we should consider a day off for our election process. Maybe.

One of the benefits of being a Visiting Research Fellow here at the University, is that I am invited to a wide variety of academic and social activities and on this past Election Day, I took the opportunity to do some volunteer work with other grad students. The invitation said simply, “Help Feed Hungry People”. I had no idea what we were going to do or where it was going to happen, but I had a day free and love to feed people.

Just after noon, a group of us piled onto a bus and headed into the Talpiot industrial district in the southeast part of Jerusalem. Beyond the neighborhoods, past the auto dealers and malls, junk yards and empty lots, we turned down a dirt road that frankly looked a little spooky. At the first gate, the bus stopped and the gate opened into a barren courtyard and a nondescript building with a simple sign identifying it as “Pantry Packers”.

We were greeted by a delightful young man, originally from Houston, who took us through the introduction to the organization and their work with the hungry. We watched a video that explained how the needy are screened, and helped with dignity. Food is delivered to homes, no standing in lines for a hand out, and other services are offered to help depending on the level of the client’s needs. Some get food, some food and a hand up, and many have graduated to self-sufficiency with the assistance they have received.

Our assignment, should we choose to accept it, would be packaging rice for distribution. Bags and labels, date stamped, measured, sealed and packed in boxes of 30 bags each for shipment. It was really a pretty smooth operation, like they’d done this before. We rotated through stations, either labeling or date stamping the bags, pouring rice into a hopper set to premeasure the rice for each bag, bagging the rice then delivering it to the person operating a little conveyor belt heat sealer, closing the top of the bag and finally packing the bags into boxes.

In the end, we helped provide food for 150 families, packing 20 boxes, each with thirty 500 gram bags of rice. 600 bags, about 661 pounds of rice.

That’s a lot of rice, and a great way to spend a free afternoon.