Tales from the Table is a weekly blog post spotlighting the donors, volunteers, partner agencies and others who serve Second Helpings’ mission. At Second Helpings, we believe that all of the best conversations are shared over a meal. We like to think that we are starting 4,000 conversations per day through our hunger relief efforts. With that in mind, we think it’s important to share the stories of the people who make those conversations possible.
Originally from Indianapolis, Zed Day worked in the computer technology field for 50 years in Indiana, California, and Kentucky, employed in banks, the Army, and the last 45 years of his career in healthcare organizations. After retiring from the University of Kentucky Medical Center in 2010, Zed moved to back to Indianapolis where his family lived and searched for ways to get involved in the community.
Zed originally became interested in volunteering at Second Helpings through his daughter, Erin Day, who started volunteering at Second Helpings in the fall of 2012, mainly at the front desk answering phone calls, letting people in the doors, inputting meal tickets into the computer, and completing any other tasks as needed. She encouraged her father to start volunteering, and Zed took her advice. He began volunteering in late 2013 as a driver companion, and then began at the front desk a few months after that. Now almost every Friday morning you will find Zed at the front desk, cheerfully doing “whatever needs to be done.” He also likes it because it “keeps him out of trouble” and he is able to interact with people coming and going. Zed strongly believes in the altruistic tripartite mission of Second Helpings, and he began devising a way that he could combine two of his volunteering services.
Another way Zed had found to give back to the community was through joining the Alumni Association Board of his old high school alma mater, Thomas Carr Howe Community High School. He stayed in touch with fellow alumni, and decided to join the board in order to promote positive change and development at Howe. Howe High School has gone through many changes throughout the years, including transforming into a charter school. Several after-school teams and clubs needed food, as Howe is located in a low-income area, but they could not receive food from other nonprofit sources, since Charter Schools USA is not a nonprofit. Zed’s Second Helpings volunteering opportunity provided a way to overcome this impasse and make application to feed the youth in the after-school programs by utilizing the non-profit Howe Alumni Association as a conduit to apply for Second Helping’s assistance.
In 2015, after almost two years of volunteering at Second Helpings and on his high school’s Alumni Association board, Zed approached Agency Relations Manager Patty Cortellini about adding Howe High School as a partner agency. Meals would be made and served to athletes and students who may not have received a meal on Friday night otherwise. After an application process, Howe High School was able to be added to a growing list of partner agencies to which Second Helpings provides free meals.
While the day has now changed from Friday to Wednesday, Howe High School students continue to receive meals for after-school programs, including Howe’s 21st Century initiatives. Without Second Helpings, the Alumni Association would be unable to provide these youth, many who are on an assisted meal plan and may not receive a meal otherwise, a free meal. The students recognize that the meals originate from Second Helpings and appreciate the Wednesday afternoon meals. Many of them live in a food desert, and with a lack of ability to obtain healthy food, the opportunity to receive a fresh, hot, nutritious meal from Second Helpings assists the students in focusing on what they should be – their education.
In Zed Day, Second Helpings found a devoted volunteer who helps move the mission forward and does what he can to help. In Second Helpings, Zed found a way to give back to his high school and make lives better for some of the students there. Each provides a service for the other, but in the end it is more than that – each is helping the other make the world a better place one meal at a time. That is what the power of food can do.