Paths to Purpose with Jelesia Griffin

“I Know I Can Be the Bridge”

When Jelesia Griffin climbs onto a forklift at Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC each day, she understands exactly what is at stake.

She moves pallets of donated food and other essentials from the volunteer sorting area into storage, positioning them for colleagues who fill orders for Second Harvest’s partner programs across the region.

“Without me, you don’t get the food boxes or the water,” she says with pride. “It gives me purpose knowing that my work is helping someone else.”

It is work Jelesia loves—and work that has helped her build the stability she once struggled to imagine.

Today, she has a home, a car, and a steady income. There was a time, however, when Jelesia had no safe place to sleep and no reliable access to food.

“You can’t tell by looking at me what I have been through,” she says. “I’m proud to be where I am.”

Finding a way forward

After leaving a harmful home environment, Jelesia found herself alone in a community without an emergency shelter or soup kitchen. At one point, she slept beneath a car after being warned that she could be arrested for sleeping on a bench.

“I was not going to jail, I knew that for sure,” she recalls. “I never knew how important shelter is.”

She remembers another night spent beneath a large tree near a bus route. Spiders descended from its branches, and ants covered the ground around her. Yet in what she describes as a surreal moment, she did not feel afraid.

“It was like they were watching over me, making sure I was OK,” she says.

The uncertainty took a toll. Panic attacks sent Jelesia to the hospital three times. Each time, she was offered transportation to a safe place. Twice, fear kept her from accepting.

“I didn’t know who to trust,” she says.

The third time, she took the chance. The cab brought her to the Bethesda Center for the Homeless in Winston-Salem, where she found shelter, food, and people who could help her begin identifying her next steps. One of those steps led to the Goodwill Career Center and a training program offered through a partnership among Second Harvest Food Bank, Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina, and Forsyth Technical Community College.

The accelerated program prepares participants for careers in logistics and includes forklift certification. As part of the program, Jelesia completed an 80-hour internship in several areas of Second Harvest’s warehouse. When a forklift position became available, she was ready.

“It’s an honor to be here,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like work because I like it so much.”

Work with purpose

Jelesia was not new to the workforce. A college graduate, she had previously worked as a certified nursing assistant, personal care advocate, customer service representative, and seasonal warehouse supervisor. The training program helped her build upon that experience and connect it to a new career path.

At Second Harvest, Jelesia drives a forklift, moving food and other donated products through a critical stage of the distribution process. She also works closely with volunteers who sort items collected through community food drives and donated by grocery retailers.

For Jelesia, the work offers more than a paycheck. It provides the satisfaction of knowing that what she does each day helps food reach someone who needs it.

That paycheck has also brought meaningful changes to her own life. She found affordable housing along a Winston-Salem bus route and eventually purchased a car.

Becoming the bridge

Jelesia has not forgotten the people who helped her—or those still facing the uncertainty she once knew.

She regularly returns to the Bethesda Center to encourage its residents and connect people with resources that may help them move forward.

“I look at where I was, and I know I can pull others out of that hopeless feeling,” she says. “I know I can be the bridge.” Sometimes she tells residents plainly: “I was here, sleeping in this shelter, getting my food here.”

She also understands the daily realities that are easy for others to overlook. Without a home, people have no refrigerator for storing food and no stove for preparing it. Shelter residents may have portable food to carry during the day, but that is not the same as sitting down to a nourishing, home-cooked meal.

So Jelesia uses some of the income she now earns to prepare meals for Bethesda’s residents.

“If somebody actually cares enough to make a home-cooked meal for me—somebody who looks like me and won’t look down on me—that’s powerful,” she says. “I believe in lifting someone up when they are down.”

Her approach begins with refusing to make assumptions about anyone’s circumstances.

“You never know how they got there, what might have gotten them there, or how long they have been there,” she says.

“I try to find ways to help them network and find their worth without making them feel bad.”

Jelesia knows that a meal, a connection, or a word of encouragement cannot resolve every challenge. But each can give someone a reason to keep moving.

“A little bit of hope is what you hang onto,” she says, “when you have nothing else.”