A unique birthday experience

My first volunteer experience for this blog was done as a part of a very unique celebration surrounding my 38th birthday. In year's past a large group of people had met at the Rathskeller or a local watering hole for drinks to celebrate my birthday. I always loved seeing tons of peoplel that i dont get to see very often. I started to think that if I could get alot of these people out on my birthday to have a few drinks, why couldnt i get them out to experience something in our community.

A few weeks ago I thought it would be a great experience to get a large group of people together to volunteer for my birthday. A great gift to give to me for my birthday is a couple hours of your time to help the less fortunate. I called up Claudia at Gleaners Food Bank (www.gleaners.org). For those of you who dont know, Gleaners is the largest food bank in Indiana. They are responsible for distributing food to shelters and non profits all over Indianapolis. They are an amazing organization. If you ever want to get a larger group of friends or co-workers to volunteer on a Saturday, they can definitely use your help. Just contact Claudia and she will take care of you.

When we arrived on Saturday it was great to see so many great people there to give their time. There was about 25 of us and if you think it was just Marty and all his non profit friends you were wrong. Eli Lilly, NCAA, Baker and Daniels, Duke Realty, Hat World corporate and many more were represented well!

Gleaners is a HUGE warehouse, and all of us were put together to package up individual bags of food that we were told was being delivered to people who were sick, or could not leave there house. There also are volunteer opportunities to drive that food around to the actual homes / care centers. Now that I think of it, Meals on Wheels is a fantastic local organization that does that as well.

After two hours we had bagged up over 1250 bags of food for people. That was quite an effort for just a couple hours on a Saturday morning. It just goes to show what kind of impact can be made with a group of people getting together to have fun on my birthday.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that I have started my 38th year off in an incredibly fulfilling way. I am excited that a new tradition was born, and I am continually humbled by the generosity of my friends. Doing something like this may not be something up your alley for your birthday, but at some point during the year just grab a few people and go do something in the community. Something that isnt through work, something that isnt because of someone else. You take the reigns and do something cool. It only takes a phone call to the volunteer director of an organization.

I am actually excited to turn 39 to see what we can accomplish on that birthday.