Our Advanced Professional Training participants at Baltimore Country Club spent an afternoon giving back to their local community. Angelica Provido shared:

The volunteer event that I participated in was fruit picking in a farm. It is a farm were it grows food to be donated to food banks and homeless shelters. It is called “First Fruits Farm, Inc.” It is located in Northern Baltimore County at Freeland, Maryland. They produce different types of fruits and vegetables like zucchini, sweet corn, pumpkins, collard greens, tomatoes, apples, potatoes, and many more. On that day, we were able to harvest zucchini. Some of them are of normal size, but most of all there are also gigantic zucchini’s that we’ve found. We even got to challenge our co-workers to find the biggest zucchini that we could harvest that day. The harvesting only lasted for 3 hours since there was a lot of us. We managed to harvest 6,000 pounds of zucchini. The farm treated us to a tractor ride tour after harvesting around their 200 acre farm. Those 6,000 pounds of zucchini will provide portioned meals for 12,000 people in the community who are experiencing hunger. Some of us were able to take home 1-2 zucchinis to enjoy. What we did was just a simple filipino appetizer just like what we were doing to a cucumber. We thinly sliced the zucchini and soaked it and vinegar and ate it. That’s how we enjoyed our freshly picked zucchini! This simple act of kindness helped built character and awareness that there are a lot of people who are fighting for their lives each day. This activity made me thank the One from the above even more, for always showing me how blessed I am for the things I got to enjoy and for what I have right now. It was my way of de-stressing from training wherein I was able to help others while helping my self too and giving back to the community.

We were able to bring home some zucchinis and was able to make sauteed zucchini with tofu and oyster sauce. - Annchel Chuca

We went to First Fruit. When we got there we are immediately welcomed by the farm heads and gathered us to tell the whole purpose of the volunteer event and then after that we went to the other side of the farm, we picked zucchinis and put them in the box for delivery. The weather was very nice to us that day and we had so much fun volunteering and knowing were helping someone. It was all about providing fresh, nutritious produce to those people who needed and also to share it with local food banks, homeless shelters soup kitchens and other food providers. I think it's important [to volunteer] because it's a way of helping and giving others also it connects you to other and brings fun and fulfillment to your life. - Keith Joaquin Enriquez

Photos submitted by Angelica, Annchel, and Keith.