Local Donations Deliver Hot Meals and Fill Shelves for Thanksgiving Week
John Palminteri
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) – The Thanksgiving week has come a week early for many people.
The United Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara County served about 1000 meals at its clubs with the final dinner Friday night in Goleta.
The meals are prepared at the Westside Club kitchen and delivered. This week meals have also been served already in Carpinteria, Lompoc, Westside Santa Barbara.
Each one is a hot turkey dinner with thick cuts of turkey, along with corn, stuffing, salad, dessert and a beverage.
Staff members, volunteers, members of the Rotary have all been involved in the set up, serving and clean up.
This is an annual tradition for the clubs and they do it prior to Thanksgiving week when many of the families are out of the area or have other plans.
“We look forward to this event every year to be able to celebrate our kids and our families, and to really to let them know that we are grateful for them,” said interim United Boys & Girls Club Director Christie Rojo.
The need has been growing in all areas. “We’re super grateful to all of our donors who have donated to our Zero Hunger Program. We have an amazing food program team that works hard every day to really comfort food insecurity in our community. Now more than ever, we need to gather together around our families, around our children to make sure that they have nutritious meals every day,” she said.
Many of the kids in the program are also on the food programs at their schools that enable them to have nutritious food while on campus. This dinner extends that food security to them, their families and their neighbors thanks to support from financial donors small and large. “Unfortunately, we’re living in times where, we have people that are still, going to bed hungry every night. We really take that seriously. And it is our call to action to be able to feed our kids every day in our club.”
Also in the spirit of the season, Girls Incorporated of Greater Santa Barbara has had a food drive with non perishables. Flyers have been up and a video is on social media. The public has responded with many items in a large collection bin at the doorway.
Tiana Garcia is a Program Facilitator with Girls Inc. and says, ” they’ve really felt very passionate about helping the unhoused community. So we organized this food drive. They made fliers. They’ve been putting the fliers up around the community. “
Emme Lelevier -Joseph said, “we were going to help, save the planet or help the homeless shelter. And we all agreed on helping the homeless shelter, because a bunch of us feel bad that the holidays coming up and nobody has any food to eat. So we decided to donate canned food to help them.”
. Two of the organizers said they had a marketing plan too and it worked.
Emma Moseley said when the posters were done, “we gave some to our classes at school.”
Garcia said, “we’re going to take it to the, women’s portion of the Santa Barbara Rescue mission. And we’re going to drop it off right before the holidays so that they can, you know, get a little nice meal for Thanksgiving. “
The drop off for the Rescue Mission will be Monday and the collection continues all weekend at the door of Girls Inc. where they may get a second box.
It will also include one other item.
Garcia said, “I definitely want to have the girls write a letter to them so they can see, like, where this all came from and how much they really care about the the whole community.”
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