Last month I had the opportunity to participate in a food distribution at the Mid-City Church of the Nazarene. The event involved handing out food (which was donated from local food banks and businesses) to financially-burdened residents of City Heights. Many volunteers showed up to the church on the morning of the distribution, all performing different tasks to help the process run smoothly. I assisted in breaking down empty food boxes and gathering them for recycling, as well as reorganizing any extra food that had not been taken.

On November 5, 2016, my fellow Paperfree engineers and I were able to assist with the food distributions at Mid-City Nazarene Church in City Heights. The church holds food distributions every first Saturday which “gives away items from local food banks and businesses to people-in-need who live in and around City Heights”. I was able to help with breaking-down and throwing away empty boxes as well as organizing empty pallets. It always feels good to help out. Thanks to Ethan Wade for inviting us to volunteer.

I volunteered at a food distribution at the Church of Nazarene in Mid-City. As a volunteer, I was tasked with cleaning up the cardboard boxes and trays that contained the canned foods and collected those that were to be redistributed. There are many people in San Diego that are homeless, elderly and can no longer work, or part of a low-income family. It was great seeing so many good people come together to help those that are less well-off. This was my first time volunteering at the food drive but I will definitely volunteer more in the future to help out those in need.

For my community effort I decided to start with the following question: How can I use my knowledge and expertise to help the community? Throughout the years I have developed many skills, some of which have been outside of work. Although in this case it was a different set of skills that I do not necessarily exercise at PaperFree, it was still under the PaperFree core belief of giving back to the community.

In a recent press release, OpenText announced that twenty three of the global supply chains awarded status on the Gartner 2018 Supply Chain Top 25 utilize OpenText Business Network to manage their operations.  These companies come from a variety of industries, and the 2018 list features new entries in the life sciences, retail, and consumer products spectrums.  The ranking comes from evaluation of two components: a quantitative measurement of business performance and a qualitative representation of both peer and Gartner analyst opinions. (

Every first Saturday of the month a local church has a major food distribution for people in need. I volunteered as a translator/cleaner to help the food distribution run smoothly. It was an exciting experience that gave me the opportunity to connect with the elderly in my community and give them a helping hand.

Solutions for Change is an organization that is not just only a homeless shelter, but their goal is to permanently solve homelessness by providing families the opportunities and access to skills and resources needed to rebuild their future. Every Saturday morning, parents are responsible for cleaning their homes and need volunteers to help watch and care for their children during that time.

I was able to catch one of the few winter harvests from HarvestCROPS. What this organization does is gather a group of volunteers to harvest fruit from local residents and donate the fruit to low-income families. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be difficult for low-income families to have because they can be quite expensive at grocery stores. What's great about this process is that it benefits all groups that are included. The local residents get a tax deduction, their yard cleaned, and a good feeling that their fruit is not going to waste.

I recently had the opportunity to use my sewing skills in a way that would benefit those in need. For the first part of my volunteer work I, plus many other women at my church, prepared and sewed about 100 pillowcase-sized fabric drawstring bags for a small charity project called Holiday Gift Bags.