Paying it forward with the Daily Bread Outreach

At our first-ever Home Office Give Back Days, Amanda Legacy (Operations Project Manager in Halifax, NS) and teammates in her region volunteered at the Daily Bread Outreach, which provides food and hot and cold beverages in a safe and supportive environment for individuals in the community.

“The Give Back Day was a great way to streamline and mobilize our teams and employees to have an impact on a national scale,” Amanda said. “We were able to make a difference across all of the provinces, especially where we live within our own communities.”

Amanda and her teammates prepared a hot meal (along with sandwiches, snacks, and beverages) for approximately 70 people. They had to shop for ingredients and cook the meal themselves, which made for a great team-building experience.

“We were involved in the full meal process. Once the stew recipe was approved, we shopped, prepared, cooked, cleaned, etc. On that day, Halifax had a corn starch outage, so we had to scramble to find certain ingredients,” she explained. “It started off in a slight panic, but in the end, it was so much fun to talk and laugh with each other. There were so many of us. We were also able to help the other volunteers with other tasks aside from food prep.”

In addition to meeting and getting to know her coworkers, it was a truly meaningful experience for Amanda.

“No matter how busy life gets, it’s important to reach out to our communities for a few moments because the benefits go both ways,” she said.

On a practical level, we can help those in need (and the organizations that advocate for them), but we can also take home invaluable perspective with each volunteer event.

Amanda’s Key Takeaways

“It’s important to step outside your normal life,” she said. “We get caught up in our day-to-day tasks: I have to get groceries; I’m behind on my schoolwork; There’s so much traffic; There are so many deadlines at work. Despite all that, we can each grab opportunities to give back because in just a few hours you have given back to someone else in need, and also support your own wellness as well. It might seem like you don’t have enough time, but when you get there, you appreciate that you have enough time.”

Seeing first-hand the strong bonds between volunteers and those in need left a lasting impact on Amanda.

“It is very tight-knit community. We saw what it was like to be at the heart of it. The organization really immersed itself. They are a resource not just for food or physical needs but also emotional support as well,” Amanda said. “One of the patrons came in and the volunteers knew it was her birthday. So, we all sang her Happy Birthday. It was great to be part of that.”