The Join Us Making Progress (JUMP) community service program of the Associated Students, participated in a food drive at the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa on Saturday, Sept. 10. Nearly fifteen Seawolves were brought to the food bank. They managed to package dozens of meals to support less fortunate families all over Sonoma County. The meals can also make it to various places in Northern California such as Humboldt and Lake County. But, they’re primarily in Sonoma County helping local people in Rohnert Park, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa. 

The environment at the food bank was upbeat. Men and women of all ages were volunteering. The lobby had a big, open room with windows overviewing the assembly line and other packaging rooms. The coordinators were very friendly and seemed to be very excited about the turnout from the group. 

I spoke to a few different students who were volunteering for this JUMP event. Fourth year psychology major, Vanessa Gonzalez, offered her thoughts on the event, “I thought it would be fun to come out and volunteer. This is my first time at the food bank. I have experience in other forms of [volunteering], like Lobo’s pantry, but I have never been to a JUMP event before.” 

I was able to speak with the AmeriCorps VIP and volunteer at JUMP, Schaefer King. He has been working at Redwood Empire for a little over a year now and has overseen dozens of food drives. King started working for Redwood Empire last year in the midst of the pandemic. Since then, COVID-19 related regulations have been loosened. Over the pandemic they had a station outside of the building and they had mandatory mask policy in place. I asked King about their current COVID-19 regulations, and about their move from outside back to inside, “We just recently moved everything back inside at the end of July. We have eased out of our COVID-19 regulations. We don’t require masks or anything like that, [but] we ask if you are not vaccinated, that you wear a mask inside. Other than that we don’t have any strict COVID-19 policies.” 

King oversees the operations of JUMP and makes sure everything runs smoothly in order to properly and safely give back to the community. He stated that there is a great deal of preparation that goes into taking care of the food they give out, as well as the transportation of the food. I asked what the standard procedure for preparation is, King said, “We start the night before. We pull out the produce and what other food we’re going to use in the morning, as well as the rest of the ingredients used to assemble the meal. After everything is sorted, we load up the trucks with the food and it is given to each distribution site throughout the next few days.” 

JUMP will be holding another event this coming Saturday in collaboration with N.O.A.H. Food Pantry in Rohnert Park at 10:30 a.m. if you would like to participate in the next day of service with fellow SSU students.