What keeps this St. John’s food bank co-ordinator coming to work

The people who work here at the Bridges to Hope Food Bank confront crisis every day. They help people who don't have enough to eat, who don't have much of anything, but many do have gratitude and it's sometimes expressed in messages to staff. Messages like this one here, your generosity has meant so much to us, not only in helping provide for our needs, But in reminding us we are not alone. That is just one of many messages. So staff, like Chandra Dodd, know they're making a difference. Hi, how's it going? Hearing the positive comments from the client feedback forms was really nice. I was quite embarrassed, but in a good way. For intake I see all the clients. I'm the first person that you come to see. We have a very large variety in clientele. We have a lot of people who are individuals and we have a lot of people who have very large families and we also have people who come from many different countries. I will take their MCP and call it over to the Community Food Sharing Association where they keep track of all the hampers in St. John's. There are many different languages that we have to consider when we are doing intakes. So we often have a translator open on our phone, so we're able to try and communicate a little bit better. Sometimes people who do have speech barriers will rely on their children who do have a better understanding of English to actually do the translation for them and even fill out the forms and stuff. Some of the most challenging days that I have faced have been obviously days where we have upwards of 150 people into the waiting room in those three hours that we're open. We also will have the occasional person who is a little bit agitated, but we try our best to try and de-escalate the situation and treat them like anyone else. In overwhelming situations I often remind myself that the client is not upset with me rather than they're upset with the situation that they're in. So I try to keep my breathing exercises and sometimes I will also ask the client to do breathing exercises with me so they can kind of kind of get to a It's a more calm level and we can communicate with each other better. After pantry is closed, I do often do other things like deliveries, food reclamation, and picking up donations from people's houses as well if they can't get out to donate to us. I genuinely do care about all of our clients and I want to see them get to a place where they don't need to come to a food bank anymore. The best thing that I see is when I haven't seen a client in a while so I hope that they are doing good and often times they will maybe even swing by to the front door and just say like I won't be needing this anymore, I have a job now but I want to thank you for everything that you've helped us with and that's really rewarding for sure.