Final Update

The past few days in the warehouse have been a lot of sorting and counting. We counted toiletries and hygiene kits and books and stuffed animals. We also spent an afternoon rearranging one section of the warehouse to make it easier to fill orders. We haven't gone to a school in a while because the school year is ending so instead we've been inventorying.

Yesterday we went to school and collected the boxes we had put out for donations. We brought in a lot of stuffed animals and books and some school supplies.

I really enjoyed my may project. While it was a bit tedious at times (too much counting) and my hands ended up smelling like soap on multiple occasions, it was amazing to see the impact of what I was doing and how grateful the children were. The work that the Little Bit Foundation does is great and helps out the children and their families so much. I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to work with them.

Update with even more pictures

Yesterday was pretty boring. We sorted and put away clothes that had been donated and washed. Then we put stickers in books and counted them and sorted them into levels. Then we spent the rest of the day inventorying and organizing the toiletries section of the warehouse. This part of the warehouse has dental kits and hygiene kits plus lots of extras of what goes in them. It was really disorganized. There was so much there that we didn't get anywhere near finishing.

Some of the many books in the warehouse. On the right are
some of the shelves with boxes full of books.

Today was a little more fun. We spent the morning painting the boutique room in one of the schools. The foundation's colors are purple and green so we painted the room those colors. We couldn't finish completely today because we had to wait for the paint to dry. Tomorrow a few people will go back to the school and finish painting the door frames purple. They also want all the students in the school to put their hand prints in purple on the bench so that when they come in to get their clothes they can see their hand prints. When we got back to the warehouse we finished counting and sorting the boxes of toiletries they we started the yesterday. We finally finished and took like a 5 minute break and we had 30 minutes left before it was time to leave and that's when they told us that there were like 20 more boxes of toiletries that we had to go through. So that was a fun surprise. Anyway, not too bad of a day.

When we thought we were finished sorting.
Also we found this stuffed monkey.

The boutique room we painted. We did the green and
purple and the tops of the other walls are purple too.

Update (with a picture this time!)

Today was another warehouse day. In the morning we sorted donations and then we finished the inventory that we started yesterday. Yesterday we counted everything except the casual weekend clothes and today we counted all the casual clothes. Once again they thought this task would take us a lot longer than it did so we took like an hour for lunch while they came up with something for us to do. Also our sponsor is in Europe?? Not sure why but anyway. They finally came up with something else for us to do and it was sorting more donations. That's when we made the soap tower (shown below). Anyway not the most exciting day but not too bad. We're going to schools tomorrow so I'm excited for that!

Not completely sure my day count is accurate but this is an update!

Today I was in the warehouse again working on a project with two other Burroughs students and two students from other schools. There were also some CBC guys there in the morning who have been putting stickers in books for like a week so not sure what's up with that. Anyway our sponsor wasn't there today because she had a funeral to go to but she left us with a list of things to do that she thought we wouldn't finish. We started off by filling orders from one of the schools but these were re-orders, meaning we either didn't have the specific clothing item when the orders first went out to the school or the item did not fit them. There were about 20 of these and we filled them in about 10 minutes. We then moved on to our big task for the day: inventory.
Since the school year is ending, orders don't really need to be filled anymore. Our job today was to count. Everything. Our sponsor left a packet for us that listed everything that needed to be counted and it was like 8 pages long. We started with uniform shirts which are unisex and counted the ones that were easily accessible. But that was where things got complicated. Along with the bins, the warehouse shelves were full of boxes with extras of different sizes and most of the time what was written on the outside of the box was incorrect. We had to pull the boxes off the sometimes really high shelves, count what was in them, and put it back. After we counted the uniform shirts we did boys uniform pants, girls uniform pants, mens uniform pants, womens uniform pants, shoes (boys and girls and mens and womens of all the sizes), and winter coats which had boxes all the way up to the ceiling. We were burnt out pretty quickly and this task became extremely tedious. We finished around 1 and since our sponsor had thought that that would take us more than a day she didn't have anything else planned for us to do. We were excited because we thought we could leave early but then one of the other employees grabbed us and gave us a new task. A shipment of new uniform shirts and pants had just arrived so there were about 15 boxes of clothes. They had to be counted and the tags had to be taken off and then they had to be put away. We finished that in record time and re-totaled our master inventory sheet and they were all really impressed that we had finished. This time they really didn't have anything else for us to do so we got to leave an hour and a half early.
Also there is so much dust in the warehouse that my allergies are majorly acting up so that's been a blast.

Day 4

Yesterday was a pretty low key day in the warehouse. Some of the other volunteers and I spent the morning counting shoes. There were a lot of shoes. We then put together 26 incentive boxes that would be sent out to the schools. The incentives are things like smiley face erasers and notebooks and crayons and they're kept in a box in the schools office. The kids get to pick out a prize if they get necessary things signed by their parents or things like that. This task included climbing up to the top of this ladder that was maybe 9 or 10 or 11 ft tall and pulling large heavyish boxes off the top top shelf of the warehouse. It was a little terrifying. I almost fell twice. Anyway one we were done with that we shredded some papers and took the tags off some jeans and then spent the rest of the afternoon sorting and inventorying and putting away clothes that had been donated and washed. Super fun. 

Day 3

So today I was supposed to go to a book fair at one of the schools that Little Bit works with but they already had enough volunteers going. I spent the first half hour in the offices sorting new shoes that had just come in. I spent the rest of the morning with 3 other students and 2 employees at a school that little bit has been working with for almost 2 years. The students at this school were in pk - 3rd grade. The process of giving the students their clothes was much more organized here than it was yesterday. This school had a room that was designated as the Little Bit Boutique. They had extra clothes and shoes and socks and toothbrushes and it was set up like a store. The kids were all really sweet and absolutely loved getting their new shoes. We then went to a school that had 4th - 6th grade and gave those students their orders. This school was associated with the first one but was a little less organized. We were working out of the counselors office and it was really small but we got all the students their orders. After we got back to the Little Bit office I spent the afternoon washing stuffed animals, sorting laundry, inventorying incoming clothing and shredding papers. I left after the paper shredder overheated. Tomorrow I will be staying home and washing clothes for them instead of going into the office because they have a large group coming in and it would be too crowded.

Day 2

Today was my second day at Little Bit. The morning went by really slowly and kinda sucked. I spent two and a half hours going through four large trash bags of grocery bags. These bags were a donation from the girl scouts and since they had been used for the April Showers supply drive some of them were unusable. I had to separate out the bags that could be reused for orders from the schools and the ones that were too damaged. It took forever and was extremely boring. Also by the end my fingers were grossly dirty and I found a dead beetle in one of the bags so it really wasn't the best morning. I had a lot of fun after lunch though. I got to go with another student and two of the Little Bit employees to their newest school to deliver orders to the students. This was the first time they had brought orders of clothes and shoes to the school so we had about 90 orders to hand out in less than two hours. There were 6 of us there and when the kids came in we would find their order and make sure the shoes and clothes fit because we didn't want to send them home with clothes that don't fit. The kids were so excited to get their new shoes and it was amazing to see how happy they were. A lot of the kids came in wearing shoes that had holes in them or that were clearly too small and their faces lit up when they saw their new shoes. We gave the kids the option of wearing their new shoes home or wearing the ones they came in with and every kid I helped wanted to wear their new shoes. One little boy that I was helping put on his new shoes and smiled super wide and said it felt like he was floating. It was so great to be able to give these kids something that they really needed and that they also loved. It was really hectic though because we had to get through so many kids in so little time and the room that we were in was pretty small and really hot. All in all it ended up being a really good day. I loved interacting with the kids one on one and seeing the impact of the warehouse work. Tomorrow I am going to a book fair all day so I'm looking forward to that.

My First Day

Yesterday was my first day working at the Little Bit Foundation in the city. I had a really great time. I was there with 2 other Burroughs students and together we worked on a couple different projects and did a lot of laundry. The foundation's facilities consist of a small office and a warehouse. All the space is donated by a company that they share the warehouse space with. We worked in the warehouse for the day doing a couple different things. Our first project was to inventory and sort a donation that they had just received. We wrote a list of everything that had been donated (mostly clothes and one chewed up dog collar that we immediately threw away) and then put the new clothes into the bins in the warehouse. The donation was large and took us a little while to get through. Our next task was to fill some of the orders that had come in from the schools. The Foundation has a liaison in all the schools that they work with and the liaison sends in orders to the Foundation for what each specific kid needed. We packed orders for a couple different schools and the kids from these schools needed uniform clothing, everyday clothing, shoes, socks, and underwear. We packed each kid a bag with what they needed and it was really fun to pick out the clothes for the kids and put together outfits. It was great to know how much the kids would appreciate receiving these packages and how much they would help. After lunch, our final project was to organize all the shoes in the warehouse. Little Bit gets all its shoes as donations from Fila since the founder of Fila is from St. Louis. Fila sends Little Bit a lot of shoes and there were boxes of them that had not been organized. We went through and organized all the shoes by gender and size and we were able to clear a lot of the boxes off the shelf. We also got to use a wobbly warehouse ladder because a lot of the boxes were up on high shelves. It was a good day and I felt like I had helped a lot. Next week I will be able to go into a school and interact with the kids that we are helping and I am really looking forward to that. Also the other Burroughs students and I are going to have a supply drive starting sometime next week, probably to collect books and stuffed animals. So far I am really enjoying my May project and I can't wait to continue next week!