February 2022 Aragon Cares: Loaves and Fishes

By Katie Bartenslager

Since the pandemic, our in-person Aragon Cares activities were put on hold. But now, they are back! We were all itching to get out of the office and into our community to make a difference. 

Did you know that despite the Bay Area’s booming economy, 1 in 4 people do not know where their next meal is going to come from? Each day, more and more people are becoming hungry in our Bay Area community and suffer from food insecurity.

This month, Aragon wanted to help the food crisis. We volunteered at Loaves and Fishes in San Jose, California. They are a nonprofit organization that gives food to those who need it. In this blog, we will go over the Loaves and Fishes organization, their mission, how we helped, and how you can help! 

Loaves and Fishes 

In 1980, Loaves and Fishes began with one meal. It was a simple meal of bread and fish served to 11 adults and 15 children. Fast forward 40 years, and Loaves & Fishes now provides over 1.5 million meals each year to our hungry neighbors throughout the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in the Bay Area.

Their mission is clear, “to provide hot nutritious meals that are prepared, delivered, and served to hungry and homeless families, children, seniors, veterans, students, and disabled individuals.”  And we couldn’t wait to help! 

How Aragon Helped 

On Monday, Feb 28th, 7 members of Aragon went to the Loaves and Fishes office in San Jose to help pack brown bag lunches that will be distributed throughout the week to those in need. 

Our Aragon volunteers split into 3 groups to put together the brown bag lunches. The lunches included: 

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Water bottle 
• Chex mix
• Peanut snack pack 

Each group then filled bins with 25 completed brown bags and continued the process for 2 hours!

Each group was able to form their own unique technique for packing and preparing the sandwiches. Some put all of the bread out and had one person putting on peanut butter, another putting on jelly, and another prepping the rest of the snacks. No matter how it got done, being in one room full of people who just want to make our community better was rewarding. 

The Aragon team was able to pack 200 lunches in 2 hours and with the rest of the volunteers’ efforts, Loaves and Fishes packed over 500 lunches in one day alone. That is 500 people who will not wonder if they will go to bed hungry for the day! 

How You Can Help

Does this sound like a fun activity to you?! Loaves and Fishes is looking for volunteers every Monday from 11am-1pm to help pack lunches.

You can schedule your volunteer day and time here. 

Aragon Cares

If you are interested in learning more about our past Aragon Cares activities, check out our Aragon Cares page. Stay tuned for our March activity!