Feel the Community

"Community Engagement" week continues. This, my program tells me, is a week where they are empowering me to become skilled in assessing and utilizing community resources. This in turn will make me a more effective physician in my community as I am able to refer patients to said resources. Under this guise, my program sent me to a women's shelter to serve breakfast and lunch for 3.5 hours. I'm all for volunteer work- but when it's actually VOLUNTEERED and not MANDATORY. Most of the time I stood behind a table doling out cereal, nachos (popular), fruit (not so popular- one obese woman asked me what was in the fruit bowl, I said, "Fruit," she said, "What?" and leaned in closer to look into the bowl. "Delicious fruit!" I elaborated, "There are apples, oranges, even some pears!" I smiled. She gave me a look that can best be described as "Eww. You're crazy," and with a disapproving look fixed at the fruit bowl, shook her head and walked on by to get some juice. A lot of obese women walked past the fruit bowel with a dismissive wave of their hands after picking up a donut or danish. That was real encouraging for the doctor working the fruit bowl.) Anyway. Highlights included cutting my hand working in the kitchen, and a squabble breaking out in the nacho line that was eventually broken up by a nun. I spent another 3.5 hours later that evening preparing bags of food for people at the county food bank, which was actually very interesting. I learned about all the other functions that the county food bank serves in my community (they offer adult education classes including parenting skills, English language, job skills, computer literacy, and more, all FREE with free childcare offered at the same time!).

I have to go now. Why? I have to get ready for a meeting with someone who is going to talk about community asset based something or other, and then I have a police ride-along. What does that mean? I don't know. So cheers to that, I'll update you later!