Volunteer Spotlight: George Birchfield, MD
We sat down with longtime volunteer George Birchfield, MD this month. A member of the Production Corps, George has volunteered every Tuesday with Food Lifeline since 2019, contributing over 1,100 hours. A medical doctor for over 34 years, he’s dedicated his life to helping others and loves being part of a team working toward a worthy goal. We’re so grateful for George’s commitment to our mission, the connections he fosters, and for the all the fun, positive energy he brings to the team every week.
Helping others has been a core value for George his entire life. He worked as a medical doctor and a blood and cancer specialist for 27 years. He then worked in hospice and palliative care for 7 years, and started volunteering at Food Lifeline in 2019, feeling a desire to do even more.
“Getting to know people and doing something in your community to help others, that’s really important to me. If you lift others up you lift yourself up, and you make the world a better place.”
-George Birchfield
He comes to Food Lifeline every Tuesday as part of the Volunteer Corps. Arriving around 8:30, he helps prep for the day’s sort, and if no one needs help with set up he’ll build boxes. He then helps with whatever sort they are doing that day, guiding the volunteers and talking with them, then cleaning up and doing the trash and compost. After lunch, he repeats it all again for the afternoon session.
“I enjoy it,” he says of the commitment. “It brings me value because I’m helping other people. And, you know, if I was in that position, I wish that people would help me too, that people cared about me and wanted me to do better.”
He also volunteers at Treehouse, serves on an admissions committee for medical school, and is also part of a group that provides guidance to help people prepare their families for their death.
In keeping with helping others, growth is another of George’s personal values, and one that also draws him to volunteering.
“People define success in different ways. For me, it’s continuous personal growth. So certainly volunteering helps fulfill that.”
In eighth grade, he had an epiphany that he needed to get out of the house more and start doing things with other people, so he started pushing himself to do drama and other activities, to get to know people and make more friends. And part of why he went into medicine was so that he could have conversations every day that are meaningful and important.
All these years later, George is a connector of people and a conduit of community. He sees his role to always create a positive team environment to bring people together, in the same way did when he was leading a medical team.
“I talk a lot of smack and try to make it fun,” he said. “I mean, that was the same thing at my job. I was in charge of the team every day and it was my job to make sure my team’s doing their work well, but also enjoying it. And having fun. And by caring for them, being interested in them. I mean, people enjoy it more. They feel care. And that’s the same thing with just talking to the volunteers. I just talk to people and get interested in them and learn about them.”
Talking trash and having fun are a big part of the camaraderie with other volunteers and staff. When Volunteer Repack Coordinator Sam Bhutay first explained how high to stack crates, George remarked, “Oh, that’s the same height as your armpits!” “As high as Sam’s armpits” has since become a humorous and memorable unit of measurement on the floor.
Being able to interact with people like this is his very favorite part of the job. “That’s all,” he says. “Just doing something together in a group to help other people.”
“Listening is the greatest respect you can show another person. We all like to be in places where people are interested in us and care for us.”
-George Birchfield
To anyone considering volunteering George says, “If you like doing something to help your community, to build it, to be stronger, better, healthier, then this is something that’s really meaningful and does that. You’re gonna meet really good people that work here, that volunteer, so you’re just going to have a good time. Give it a shot.”
He emphasizes the many net positives of volunteering: helping others, being part of a team, and feeling good about his role in his community.
“It’s just immersing myself in in a community that’s working towards a worthy goal of helping other people. That’s very rewarding to me.”