Ch-Ch-Ch-Charity

Last Spring I joined a group called "Community Helpers." This is a group of ladies who, every month put together money to purchase items for people in need. If you're part of this group, you decide how much you want to donate. You can even just donate your time if you don't want to donate money. After the money has been collected, we go purchase various items to put together care packages. The packages are given to the catholic church, and then the Sisters of the church distribute the packages to families in need. On Tuesday the Community Helpers met to go purchase all the items. We first went to the bazaar, Artuem, for the sugar, flour, pasta, rice, soap, detergent, and plastic bags. The shop where we purchase all these items knows we come every month so they now have everything ready and sorted for us. We used to have to buy the the sugar, flour, and pasta in packages, then redistribute it all in plastic bags. Now this shop does all that for us. After Artuem, we made the trek across the city to Metro.

Spotted a train on our way to Metro

Metro is a European chain shopping center. I think it is similar to Sam's club. You have to have a membership card to shop there, and you can buy things in bulk. It is hard to find items in bulk here. Even juice boxes are sold separately! Metro is a bit of a ways outside the city. Nazarbayev University arranges a bus trip out there every Saturday morning for the faculty. I tend to go twice a month. They have hummus and bacon! Plus, this is a place where you can get everything you need in one place, and only pay for your things one time! It's the closest thing to a Wal-Mart so I really enjoy it. If you shop at the bazaar, you have to purchase different items separately from different vendors, which always turns out to be a very long process.

Back to the charity story. We went to Metro to pick up the rest of the items. Tea, bullion, tomato paste, vegetable oil, and powdered creamer.  Metro also now knows we make this monthly purchase so they had all these items ready to go for us. We just had to pay. After we left Metro, we went over to a house where the Sisters of the Catholic Church live. They have a place in their basement for us to sort all of our items. We purchase enough items for thirty families so we start out by setting 30 plastic bags out on the tables. Then we place one of each item on the bags to make sure each family is getting the same items. When we are finished, we leave the packaged bags at the house, and the Sister's deliver them to the families. The Sister's also run a soup kitchen out of this house. They have it every Wednesday and Saturday. I'm going next Tuesday to help peel and chop vegetables for them to make the soup.

Items being sorted.

I'm really glad I found this group of ladies. It's such a great feeling to do something for others.