A Community Citrus Drive by Jace

A Community Citrus Drive by Jace - April 2022 Scholarship Essay

Every year in the Coachella valley, thousands upon thousands of lemons, grapefruit and oranges go to waste. Just in one community alone, with many houses being occupied by citrus type trees, hundreds of citrus fruits are left uneaten, thus thrown away. After recently signing up to volunteer for the Find Food Bank, I realized how many people in the valley struggle to purchase food in general and due to the covid restrictions that have left many without jobs for an extended period of time. I wanted to do more to provide for my community, which led me to the idea of doing a citrus drive in my community, to donate to the FIND Food Bank. My plan was to set out flyers, pick the fruit myself or ask the neighbors to leave it in their driveways, and then drive all the fruit out to the FIND warehouse where it can be processed and packaged. It was a fairly simple plan, and I figured we could get a few bags of fruit to help the community. I was wrong.

I formulated a plan to design and distribute flyers to my neighbors. My next steps were to walk around my neighborhood, placing these flyers in every mailbox. The flyers described how we intended to collect all of the citrus throughout the weekend. We also shared my phone number and email so neighbors could contact us about the details for pickup or picking. Instantly, I began to receive a bunch of texts and emails from owners who were happy to donate all their excess fruit. The first doner was generous enough to pre-package all of the grapefruits and oranges. Just from this one house, we collected ten bags of fruit. This was completely unexpected, and I was in shock when considering what we might do with this much fruit from every house. Sure enough, by the end of the weekend, we drove 587 pounds of fruit to the FIND Food Bank for our neediest neighbors. Seeing this project come to life helped shape my views of what it means to be part of a community.