Did you know the Tucson Community Food Bank relies on about 120 employees?

It takes a lot more than employees to run a food bank!

Doug Ruopp was my guide at the food bank, and Cindy Montano assigned us into jobs.

My job was to put two boxes of raisins and a box of walnuts into a bag. Outside, Ruopp told me that the Community Food Bank helped people get their own gardens. They bring dirt, soil, seeds and even worms to get gardens started.

Ruins of the Franciscan church at Mission San José de Tumacácori NPS Photo by Ed Wittenberg

Do you know what is special about September 17? Not only is it Constitution Day, which celebrates our Constitution signing but also the day that Tumacacori National Historical Park has it’s naturalization ceremony.

I went to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. It took 20 minutes by train to get there from London. The Royal Observatory is the location of the prime meridian. The prime meridian separates the eastern and western hemispheres of the earth. It is 0 degrees longitude. At the museum, there was a long gold line that separates the world in half and that’s the prime meridian. You can stand on the west side and east side of the world at the same time. It is an awesome feeling!!! 

At the Tucson JCC, nine boys and girls from Israel performed many dances in front of an audience. Their names were Ranen, Amit , Hadar, Noa, Alon, Ofri, Oria, Shr and Mai.
They performed many Israeli
dances. About halfway through
their performance they played a
knowledge-based game called
Kahoot. The winner was Tea
(tea-ah) with 4,178 points and all
five questions correct.

Do you know someone who has had a blood cancer? Chances are, if you do, they may have been helped by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. One person is diagnosed every three minutes with blood cancer. Another 171,550 are expected to be diagnosed in 2016 according to the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society.

Christina Szilvassy, campaign assistant for Pennies for Patients, says the society began in 1949. Its mission is to find a cure for blood cancer. It supports families and patients fighting cancer by assisting them with co-pays and travel programs.

Childsplay began 40 years ago. David Saar, graduate student at ASU, wanted to bring a group of actors together to put imagination and wonder in the minds and hearts of children. The mission of Childsplay is “to create theater so strikingly original in form, content or both that it instills in young people an enduring awe, love and respect for the medium, thus preserving imagination and wonder, those hallmarks of childhood that are the keys to the future.”

Can you read a book to a young child, plant a tree, paint a wall?

If you can, then you can be a VOLUNTEER. A volunteer is a person who gives time freely to do tasks that help individual people or whole communities. A volunteer can make a huge difference in the life or lives of people in need. A volunteer can be a child or an adult. A volunteer can help individually or in a team setting, such as a church group, a scout group or a company group.