Watched a guy pass out at the Evergreen Fair food bank line in Monroe and now I hand out water every Saturday
So about 8 months ago I was volunteering at the food bank distribution at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, and it was one of those 95 degree days in August. We had maybe 200 people in line and this older dude just dropped right there on the asphalt, and it took like 12 minutes for anyone to get him water because nobody had any on hand. I was standing there holding a box of canned peaches and felt completely useless. After that I started bringing a cooler with bottled water and cups every single Saturday, out of my own pocket, usually about $15 to $20 a week. Now here's where I go back and forth: some of the other volunteers told me I was overstepping and that the org should handle it, not some random guy with a cooler, and honestly they might be right because it sets a weird expectation. But the other side is that people are literally standing in line for an hour plus in the heat and it costs me basically nothing to just do it. So what do you all think, is it better to push the org to fix the gap or just do the small thing yourself and not make it a whole issue? I keep going back and forth on whether me running my own little water station is actually helping or just letting the org off the hook.