This Scout Didn’t Let COVID Get In His Way Of A Great Service Project

In light of the food scarcity and unemployment around the world due to COVID-19,
Troop 154, located in Fremont, CA, decided to hold a food drive to collect food and donate it to the needy. Chaitya Jodhavat, a Star-ranked scout from Troop 154, decided to volunteer as a leader for this project. The service project itself was executed very well and received many contributions from quite a few people in the troop, but there were challenges with finding an organization to receive the food.

Over the course of this service project, he was forced to change the drop-off location twice and received the notion several times that he would have to postpone this service project to a later date.

When the project was first finalized, Troop 154 had agreed to donate its food to the
Fremont Family Center, an aging and resource center that is operated by the City Council and is located in Central Park. Chaitya had called this center several times over the course of the project to ensure that Troop 154 would still be allowed to donate our food, but about a week from the drop-off date, the center had apparently closed down due to Covid-19.

In the short amount of time remaining, he desperately tried to find a new donation center, ultimately getting into contact with Newark’s Tri-City Salvation Army Center. Once again, all the drop-off dates had been confirmed. He even called this center every few days to ensure that they were still open. Nevertheless, on the day of their delivery, the center ceased to pick up his calls. Seeing as this had happened for the second time, he had almost lost all hope and was just about to postpone the project to a different time. However, in that moment, he realized that perhaps he should take a different approach to finding a donation center.

This time Chaitya asked his family and neighbors if they were in contact with a nearby relief center. Almost instantly, his mother was able to find the contact information of a domestic violence prevention center known as NARIKA. He talked to the center’s manager, Bindu, and was able to set up a drop-off service on the original days. This time around, everything finally went flawlessly, and all the bags of food were donated to the center over the week of Monday, August 10th.

In order to make an impact, acts of kindness must be both performed and received by the community. While Troop 154 understands that Covid-19 is posing a health risk to all the employees that work at such donation centers, the food that they will be donating will ultimately help out many individuals who are in dire need of food. Thus, Troop 154 simply requests all relief centers to at least provide food drop-off services so that people can contribute in the fight against world hunger and poverty.