Written By: Olivia Varner
On Tuesday, February 20th, and Wednesday, February 21st, I had a fantastic opportunity to go and help Thrive make food for their fundraiser. Known as "Comfort Food From Around the World," this once-a-month fundraiser helps Thrive to support their ESL instruction and legal services program while also celebrating different peoples' cultures and their comfort foods. In many ways, it helps bring unity to this community. It is a drive-thru take-out fundraiser, where people sign up in advance for these $10 meals. Every month, there is a different dish from a different country. For February, it was a dish from the Philippines: Adobe Chicken with bell peppers and sauce over jasmine rice, with a Ube Crinkle Cookie on the side.
Helping out with such a fantastic organization felt awesome, and it was a fun atmosphere to work in. On Tuesday, some of us from Lycoming College helped prep the food for the next day when they would begin cooking. I was one of the five assigned to cut onions, so let's say that the entire kitchen was crying from the number of onions we were cutting, while other volunteers were cutting the chicken and peppers. On Wednesday, we assisted with many tasks, such as washing the dishes. Others helped ensure the chicken, already prepped, did not go dry and cut more bell peppers for the dish. After that, many of us created an assembly line to assemble the meals for those who benefit from the program. In the end, after you finish packaging the meals, the volunteers sit together and eat the meal everyone helped make. Like every other month, the meal did not disappoint. It felt even better since we helped make it and learned more about how much this fundraiser can help bring people closer to their homes and culture.
Thrive International Programs helps provide legal services to assist low-income and vulnerable members of the community with immigration services, as well as ESL classes and Language Cafes, which are there to have a fun time communicating with people in many different languages and various backgrounds to help grow a stronger community. If you want to learn more about what they do or even get one of the meals they make each month, visit their website at https://thriveip.org/.
