By Annalisa Anderson

Annalisa Anderson served as Chairperson of SLA Cares with Kim Whalen, Molly McKenna and Kathleen Gaydar acting as members. Early in the year, the four of us thought of two or three charitable organizations on the local, national and international level. I sent out an e-mail to the SLA IL list-serve asking members to vote on one organization to which the Chapter would donate its time, money and effort. With input from members, we choose the Greater Chicago Food Depository as our target organization.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository serves as Chicago’s food bank. It is a not-for-profit food distribution center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community. The Food Depository distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 600 pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. In fiscal year 2004-05, the Food Depository distributed more than 40 million pounds of non-perishable food, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products and fresh and frozen meat, poultry and fish, the equivalent of more than 84,000 meals every day of the year. Tens of thousands of men, women and children each week rely on the food provided by the Food Depository.

On November 8, 2005, 6 members of SLA Cares made the trip to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. After a brief volunteer orientation session, we got to work on rice detail. We worked alongside people from Chicago Cares, which is another volunteer organization that serves Chicagoland. Our job was to measure bulk rice into 2 lb bags, seal the bags and load them into a large cart. It wasn't long before we had our assembly line in place! I asked for feedback and everyone seemed to have a great time.

At the Chapter’s holiday party, we collected 107 pounds of food and $145. We collected $28.00 at the joint SLA-IL/CALL meeting on January 12, 2006.

We made another trip to the Greater Chicago Food Depository on February 18th. A good time was had by all. Thanks for another great year!