VOLUNTEERING PROFILES
Meredithe Mainquist, Volunteer Team Leader, Feeding San Diego Retired in January of this year after 35 years in IT as an enterprise software sales specialist Feeding San Diego is the leading hunger-relief and food rescue organization in San Diego County, and the only Feeding America affiliate in the region. Just this year, the non-profit is marking 15 years of service and over 300 million meals distributed to the people of San Diego County. The organization provides much needed food assistance throughout the county through its decentralized network of community partners who help distribute nutritious food at no cost in hunger hot spots. Food rescue is also a primary focus, working with local grocery stores, farms, food manufacturers, and more to rescue surplus food. At the start of the pandemic, Feeding San Diego activated its emergency response to help the many people negatively impacted. Now, over two years later, the non-profit is still seeing an urgent need for food assistance amid record-high inflation. Feeding San Diego’s services would simply not be possible without its volunteer force, who help get food out into the community. Six days a week, four times every day, there are food sorting volunteer shifts at the organization’s headquarters in Sorrento Valley. There, volunteers work to sort, glean, and pack food for individual food distributions. You started at Feeding San Diego as a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteer for the City in the early days of the pandemic. What was that like? I think that time really kindled my awareness of food insecurity. For the first time in my career I wasn’t traveling around the country and really got to learn about my community. Early in the pandemic there were much smaller volunteer groups and there was a real sense of urgency to the work. The combination of working in the warehouse and then working with CERT on the early distributions at Qualcomm stadium where we distributed the food brought home the severity of the issues. The smaller teams at the warehouse gave me an opportunity to get to know the staff and to learn about food safety and food rescue. The shifts were longer (4-6 hours) so you not only had a major sense of accomplishment but lots of fun. We had some great times training for various imagined volunteer Olympic events: who could create the
Feeding San Diego volunteer team leader Meredithe Mainquist packs donated produce for San Diegans in need
San Diegans on how they support the causes they care about and why they keep coming back Volunteer Diaries
COMPILED BY GILLIAN FLYNN AND SARAH SAPEDA
SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE CHARITABLE SD GIVING GUIDE 2023 72
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