A grueling day volunteering with World Central Kitchen

I made 1,200 sandwiches!

Published in
2 min readJan 21, 2021

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My job for most of the day was to put two slices of cheddar cheese on one half of a ciabatta roll after the guy ahead of me slathered it with a basil aioli sauce. It was quite meditative! Others were assigned to follow me with six slices of roast beef, a few sun-dried tomatoes, finished with a handful of arugula. When more volunteers came, I switched over to wrapping the freshly made sandwiches before they were delivered to national guardsman protecting our Capitol from rioters.

Normally, when I hear about the work of World Central Kitchen, they’re out feeding thousands of people after disasters like hurricanes and forest fires. This weekend they are back home serving healthy food during a calamity of a different type. I’d seen pictures of huge swaths of our city in lockdown but hadn’t been out of my neighborhood in over a week. It felt ominous walking home through all the barricades and military checkpoints. In spite of the insanity, though, there are bright spots and I’m so glad I got to see one of them yesterday.

This experience reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the passionate and compassionate folks who volunteer and who run this homegrown organization that has fed millions of people around the world. The work is hard (my back was killing me by the middle of the day). Everyone jumps in happily to do whatever needs to be done and they’re constantly in motion doing something. The vibe is compassion and teamwork.

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Creating space for conversations to transform society. Exploring what it means to be American. Recovering lawyer, public speaker, art fanatic philippahughes.com