Volunteer

Our pantry is lovingly staffed 100% by volunteers. We recover food from multiple sources, sort and stock, then run distributions to get fresh food to our neighbors all as ministry outreach. 

Volunteer Opportunities: 

• Distribution: Help our Neighbors shop and stock the pantry. You will be interacting with people from the community with food insecurities and personal traumas. You will need to handle communication and interactions in a loving and Christ-like manner.
  
  

• Sorting: Sort food after it has been recovered from stores. Food gets sorted by kind into bins and stored on rolling racks in refrigerators and freezers. This position requires repetitive heavy lifting of 20-40 pound boxes and lots of moving of racks and carts of food.
  
  

• Food Recovery: Pick up food from grocery stores and warehouses. We have many options for this, you will need to go to stores representing Open Hands of MD. Food needs to be boxed and loaded into your vehicle, then brought back to be sorted and put away at the pantry. Each store has its own size of vehicle requirement, but most need at least a mini van.
  
  

• Ministry Outreach Team: Interact with neighbors who are waiting to shop. We want to build relationships - not just feed strangers. When you invest in people they are more likely to share and ask you to pray with them. This position is not the traditional street evangelism, but being willing to have conversations and demonstrating the love of Christ.
  
  

• Prayer Team: Are you a Prayer Warrior? We are looking for you!  We love to receive prayer requests and praise reports from our neighbors and volunteers and want to have a team to pray regularly.

If any of this opportunities sound interesting to you, please fill out the following form so we can reach out to you as we have need. We will then schedule you to shadow a volunteer. Thank you!