Sinclair Community College’s Food Services department is trying to do things to help the community, according to Tim Sweet, director of food services.
One current initiative is called ‘OneSight’, and has existed for over 20 years, according to their website.
“We’re collecting used eyeglasses for the underprivileged,” Sweet said. “It’s run by Luxottica, which is another Aramark account. I was just talking to them one day and I told them, ‘I bet we could help ya’ and that’s how we got started on that.”
Anyone at Sinclair can drop off an old pair of eyeglasses into one of the OneSight boxes. The boxes are in various department offices, including the food services office in Building 7 Room 033. Sweet said he’d like for all of the departments at Sinclair to have collection boxes.
Sweet said the program has been running for a month and he said he thinks they’ve collected about 80 pairs.
That’s not the only thing food services is doing, though, according to Sweet.
“We start Nov. 1 our adopt-a-family program,” Sweet said. “It runs through Thanksgiving and we like to start it early because the students are mostly out by December. So we work on it the whole month of November, and we’re doing it this year for students in need at Sinclair that have been recommended by faculty.”
The trees went up Oct. 29. Sweet said anyone who wants to donate gifts only need to bring back an unwrapped gift to a food service location with the tag on the gift.
“It’s a great program, and all we do is put the tags on the tree,” Sweet said. “It’s the people in the school, the students, the faculty, the staff they really do the whole program. It’s such a great thing. I have people asking me all the time, ‘are you going to be doing that again’ because they want to help out.”
“If you give people a chance to help other people they always come through for you,” Sweet said. “That’s the great thing.”
Sweet said he thinks the record for families helped in the program is 123 one year. All the donations come from people at Sinclair.