Super Staff Spotlight: Mandy Hodges, Food Drive Manager
With the holiday season almost here, Food Drive Manager Mandy Hodges prepares for her first “giving season” at United Food Bank. She joined the team six months ago, but her passion for alleviating hunger and addressing food insecurity shines throughout her career. “I remember as a child just wanting to help people. When I was five my idea was to be a doctor because they help people physically and I thought, that’s how you help people.”
Mandy grew up in the deep south, where kindness and care were instilled really young. She grew up volunteering and engaging in the community, describing the feeling of social responsibility as what drives her actions. She previously worked in the Episcopal Church in youth mentorship and rallied students to find their voice. She helped them stay active in the community as advocates for issues important to them, as well as guiding them through some of the most developmental years in their life. “Teen years are tough!” she says.
During the pandemic, she earned a master’s degree in social justice and human rights, where she focused on anti-poverty and food insecurity. “It was beautiful timing,” she says, “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time to kind of formalize my education in justice issues and to be able to have a better language, a better understanding, a better network of people trying to engage in these types of conversations. Among that cultural shift in 2020 and ASU’s social justice and human rights program started getting more interest, this was happening across the country where people wanted to get involved with this.”
And get involved she did. Mandy’s work is different every day here at United Food Bank, but each day she raises awareness for the needs of the community and makes it easy to respond to them as quickly as possible. She informs food drive hosts of the action steps, assists them with the execution, and works with a great team of volunteer drivers, who she describes as the real hands and feet between bringing the food from the drives to the bank. She is also hands on herself, sometimes picking up food firsthand and working in the main warehouse to coordinate where everything gets sorted.
As the organizer of United Food Bank’s Family Action Day on September 9, Mandy planned for many opportunities to plant the seeds of learning and compassion among many young volunteers. “I think education and advocacy go hand in hand with the services that we do on any given day because that’s where change happens,” she says. She enjoyed watching the children realize what they are capable of, growing in confidence and becoming aware of how they can help in the community.
Through awareness, Mandy hopes to grow and strengthen compassion in volunteers. “One of my favorite quotes is Desmond Tutu’s ‘Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.’ Just show up with what you have with a little bit you can give, that’s where uniting communities happens,” she says when talking about United Food Bank’s mission: Uniting Communities to Alleviate Hunger. “If you know somebody, really know them, you can’t help but love them.”
Mandy would like to thank everyone who continues to donate, whether it be resources or time, because a little does go a long way, with $1 providing 5 meals at United Food Bank. In Mandy’s words, compassion is powerful.
For more about how the United Food Bank continues to work toward providing food for today and for tomorrow or for how to get involved, check out https://www.unitedfoodbank.org/.
Written by KC Raguay
