On Wednesday morning, I was in charge of hosting a 5k at my work. The event culminated with our annual Share Thanksgiving Food Drive where we put boxes around the various buildings and ask people to bring in canned/dried goods to benefit local food pantries before the holidays.
At the race, we asked all participants to bring one canned/dried good to donate to the drive. We had about 170 participants so you can imagine the chaos. Overall, we collected two big boxes of food and we were very satisfied with that.
So when I got to work this morning I was very impressed to see people dropping by my office and calling me to bring the canned/dried food in that they forgot to bring on Wednesday. We didn't keep track of people who brought food and who didn't. We didn't send out a reminder saying "If you didn't bring your food today please bring it on Friday." We were pleased with what we had and left it at that.
These people did not have to put forth this extra effort--maybe go out and buy the food, remember to bring the food from home, bring it to my office (which is set away from all the other buildings), etc. But they did!
And something as tiny as this gives me a new found hope for the human race.
