On any given Monday morning, Irving Abraham can be found at ACCFB’s Community Market, diligently loading boxes of food into the cars, trucks, and vans for the Food Bank’s partner agencies. With a smile that lights up the whole shopping floor, Irving has volunteered over 1,000 hours in over 200 shifts since he started in 2019, and he hasn’t looked back.

Irving was inspired to volunteer at the Food Bank after he learned that his job offers a half-day of paid time to volunteer in the community. “I only thought I’d be doing the day,” Irving said of his first time volunteering at ACCFB, when, after asking to do more heavy lifting and moving to the market area, he was hooked. He has since been using his saved vacation time to volunteer nearly every Monday morning and sometimes afternoons.

Irving playing a game of Tetris with boxes in a partner’s vehicle.

For Irving, maximizing the amount of food that can fit into a partner’s vehicle is a fun mental challenge “like a game of Tetris.” Irving has a reputation at the Community Market as someone who can effectively arrange any vehicle to carry as much food as physically possible, helping partners bring even more to their communities.

On the work itself, he says, “I’m getting as much out of it as I’m putting in” as the exercise of moving and loading boxes has “saved me a gym membership” and he finds “something rewarding about the physical aspect of engaging your muscles.”  

In addition to the mental and physical challenge of the work, Irving has found that volunteering can be an antidote to feeling numb about the state of the world. “You can filter out almost everything,” he says. “The human spirit is very flexible and can survive a lot. It shouldn’t take a wildfire or a flood or a landslide to remind you of how close anyone of us is to being homeless.”

Irving (left), greets agency partner Elizabeth (right), in front of the storage racks in our Community Market where network pantry partners pick up groceries for their distributions.

Rather than tuning things out, Irving turns to volunteering where he can be a “small cog in a big machine” of positive change. “I’m happy to be a part of something that’s creating or helping or changing something rather than just maintaining the status quo,” he says.

Dedicating time and effort to the community is second nature to Irving. “Everything I’m picking up, I know what it means to someone else and where it’s going to go,” he says. “I want to keep doing it because as long as I’m able bodied, I’m thinking ‘why not’…You don’t think if you should breathe out and breathe in—it’s just automatic.”