It’s peanut butter jelly time

 Peanut butter and jelly really brings people together. People generally love eating it and since it is easy to make, people don't mind making it. In the Keystone building on Friday, many people came together to make PB & J for a cause.

An organization called Omprakash contacted UWT Student Leader Specialist, Michelle Harper, about organizing an event to spread the word about the work they are doing. Also at the event students could make PB & J for St. Leo's Food Connection as an active service component.

Vance Walstra, a connections coordinator with Omprakash, gave a short speech about his organization to an audience of 7-8 students, instead of the 40 minutes he had intended. Despite the lack of turn out for his speech, Walstra wasn't disheartened. He posted on the organization's website, "It doesn't matter if you present to 5 people or 100 - if you have a solid connection with one of them, then you are successful... at least that is what I believe."

Omprakash is an organization that sends people around the globe to volunteer and ultimately help by connecting volunteers with grassroots health, education, and environmental projects. Walstra is a freelance archeologist who "loves helping others," and "through that love" he's "managed to find Omprakash." Walstra has done work in Peru and is currently in the middle of a 40 day bicycle outreach tour for Omprakash "spanning 3 states, nearly 1000 miles, and over 15 college presentations." If you're interested in working with Omprakash partners in Peru or giving Vance encouragement on his bike tour, you can contact him through his organization's website: www. omprakash.org

The active service component of the event attracted more attention, bringing together 25 volunteers from campus that made 459 sandwiches. The sandwiches benefited St. Leo Catholic church's program to fight hunger in Pierce County.

The St. Leo's Food Connection started out "as a small neighborhood food bank in a garage in 1982" and now operates: "one of the largest food banks in Pierce County, the weekly Springbrook Mobile Food Bank, the Backpack Program, Summer Meal sites, an organic fruit orchard, an on-site community garden, and the organization also helps to staff the Pierce County Gleaning Project. If you're interested in volunteering with St. Leo's you can visit them on the web at: http://www.foodconnection.org/

It doesn't matter what your background is, as long as you have peanut butter and jelly you'll find a way to stick together.