Volunteer Spotlight: Ryan Magani
For this month’s Volunteer Spotlight, we sat down with Ryan Magani, who first visited Food Lifeline in college. in 2021, he was looking for a place to volunteer regularly, and came back to Food Lifeline. And he kept coming back. Now a member of the Production Corps, he has volunteered over 280 hours and even with a full time job, Ryan comes in nearly every Tuesday evening. He enjoys the sense of fulfillment he gets from giving back, and the relationships he’s formed with volunteers and employees in the Food Lifeline Community. We’re grateful for Ryan’s commitment to our mission, and for all the energy, fun, and good humor he brings to our team every week.
There’s no typical day for Volunteer Production Corps Member Ryan Magani, and that’s a big part of what he likes about volunteering at Food Lifeline. Every session is different. Sometimes he’s sorting produce, other times he’s rinsing out bins or making boxes. He loves the variety and flexibility of his volunteer role.
He also appreciates the sense of completion he gets with projects. “I really like that you get tasks that you can complete. It feels a lot different than going to work where I’ve been working on this project for 4 months.”
“I put the food in the box, I put the box in the stack, and I’m out of here. It’s nice.”
But it’s the people and the feeling of doing something good keep him coming back.
He enjoys working with other volunteers, and he’s grown close with the Food Lifeline team as a member of the Production Corps.
“The staff at night are wonderful. They’re all really nice, they’re all really supportive. It’s always great to see them.”
He leaves every shift knowing that he did something good to help someone else. Prior to volunteering he’d had a feeling of wanting to do more to give back. He’s found that at Food Lifeline.
“I have a lot of privilege and I’m very fortunate to have the life I have and I wasn’t really doing anything for anyone else. That didn’t feel great all the time and it was eating at me. And it’s a big reduction in that sort of feeling.”
Ryan succinctly sums up the reasons to volunteer for anyone considering it: Fulfillment. Guilt reduction. Zero commitment to try it out once.
He’s also found it’s surprisingly fun.
“It’s more fun than I was expecting it to be,” he says. “It’s a lot more enjoyable. If you put onto paper, ‘You’re going to move some potatoes into a box,’ it’s like no thank you. I can go home instead. But it’s just kind of enjoyable.”
Plus, volunteering just feels good.
“The biggest immediate feeling is when you finish the shift and they tell you that you moved 3,000 pounds of food and that feels great. That’s a very nice feeling.”