John began volunteering with St. Matthew’s House after he retired and moved to Naples in November 2019. He says volunteering was one of his priorities when he retired.
“In management, traveling all over the world, I found it difficult to find time [to volunteer],” John said. “So I said, when I had an opportunity to retire, this is a time to make giving back a higher priority.”
John wasn’t familiar with St. Matthew’s House before he moved down here for retirement, but soon the name was popping up in conversation and on the news.
“I saw the food distribution side [in the news], but then I saw all the other programs you guys deliver and realized, ‘Oh, wow, they’re not just feeding people!’” John said.
He says the diversity of volunteer options stuck out to him because many people assume volunteering is just manual labor, and though that is a big part, there’s plenty of other opportunities to help by finding your niche. For John, his background in project management proved a useful way to volunteer his talents.
John currently spends two days a week volunteering manual labor at the food warehouse and one day working on the database tool he created for the warehouse team. He says the idea for the database came to him after volunteering in different areas across the organization and seeing the process of getting, packing and distributing donations.
