Volunteer
We’re Totally Volunteer Powered! See How You Can Help Provide Food Security For Our Community.
Join Us as a Volunteer
Come Spring Food Pantry is a volunteer-run, 501(c)(3) community food pantry located in Union, ME. We provide assistance to those experiencing food insecurity, ensuring access to fresh, nutritious meals for individuals and families in our community.
The Knox County Gleaners is also completely run by volunteers! So there are lots of opportunities to help. From in-pantry assistance, fundraising, and event planning to handyman work, construction, gleaning the fields, and more, we couldn’t do it without all of the time donated by our team.
If you’re interested in supporting Come Spring Food Pantry and/or the Knox County Gleaners by donating your time, please take a moment to check our Job Board to see what volunteer opportunities are currently available.
Celebrating Our Incredible Volunteers
We don’t know what we’d do without our dedicated team of volunteers! They’re all so awesome we thought we should reserve the space below to spotlight their dedication, and thank them for their care, and support. We hope you’ll return regularly to “meet” someone new and see all the ways our volunteers impact the community.
Volunteer Spotlight
We’d like to introduce you to Eileen, one of our valued volunteers at the pantry. We are entirely reliant on people like Eileen, who freely give their time and energy to benefit the community. And we are incredibly grateful for her consistent involvement in the pantry.
Eileen grew up in the Army, living in a number of different states and in Germany. If you know anything about children of military personnel, you know that they are often characterized by adaptability, resilience and comfort in a multi-cultural environment. Eileen credits her upbringing for giving her an appreciation for meeting new people and gaining exposure to many different heritages and traditions.
Now settled in Maine, when Eileen is not working or volunteering, she likes to keep things pretty simple. She loves sewing her own clothes, going for long walks, and observing the beauty of life outside in nature. At home, her life is pretty quiet but there is always plenty of dog play time! Winter is Eileen’s favorite season to be outside: she finds the beauty absolutely stunning.
Eileen works full-time as a speech pathologist in a hospital so when she decided that she wanted to volunteer, she knew that she needed something she could do on the weekends. The ability to work at our Saturday open pantry days is, in part, what brought her to us because it gave her the opportunity to give some of her time without adding another commitment to her already full workweek.
What Eileen enjoys most about the pantry is that it’s just fun: she finds the other volunteers engaging and she very much enjoys the shoppers as well. She finds that there’s a nice energy to being at the pantry, and always enjoys her time here when volunteering here. In Eileen’s words, “It doesn’t feel like a chore: it’s something I look forward to!”
If Eileen were to give new volunteers one piece of advice, it would be pretty simple: “Just have fun. Come in, get to know people, and enjoy being part of it. That’s what makes volunteering at the pantry so rewarding for me.”
