“I was raised to give back whenever you can,” she said. “With the pandemic, I wanted to find a way to help out if I could.”She saw a post on Facebook looking for a Chinese translator at a food pantry not far from her home in Chicago, so she jumped at the opportunity to give back. “I thought, ‘How great would it be to use my language skills to help out?’” she said. So, she started volunteering once a week at the St. James Food Pantry, a partner of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. She helps check clients in weekly and also assists with the pantry’s mobile food distribution once a month. Because the pantry serves a predominantly Asian-American community, her knowledge of multiple Chinese dialects helps her make a connection with the clients. “You can see in the expressions of the people that come to the pantry when I talk to them, ‘Oh, you understand me! You can get me what I need,’ and that’s a good feeling,” she said.
Christina Sung holding bananas
