The holidays around Samaritan House have officially begun and are off to a great start! We celebrated this Thanksgiving by providing a delicious, home-cooked holiday meal at the King Community Center in San Mateo for those less fortunate. Coupled with our tremendously successful food distribution days to clients this month, we here at Samaritan House have a lot to be thankful for! Here, in no particular order, are just a few things we were able to celebrate this Thanksgiving:
1. Samaritan House Kitchen Staff – Every year, community members in-need are treated to a wonderful Thanksgiving meal prepared by our talented and hard working kitchen staff, headed by Kitchen Manager Ruby Kaho. Working magic with such limited prep space, Ruby and her staff were able to prepare 150 turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner, feeding meals to 400 people this day.
2. Thanksgiving Volunteers – A total of 120 volunteers from our community took time from their day to come out to help us prepare, serve, and clean up on Thanksgiving. Both individuals and families came out to help, and we are so grateful each of these volunteers for thinking of others and taking time to give back.
3. Tons (literally) of Turkeys – 650 turkeys were donated to the Samaritan House food pantry in November. The turkeys we received from both individuals and companies around San Mateo were used on Thanksgiving and were also distributed to families.
4. Food for Families – We hosted 6 distribution days at our Holiday Center during the month of November. All of our client families – a total of 2,994 individuals and 1,104 children during the 2012 holiday season – receive food donations of non-perishable items, fresh fruit and vegetables, and a turkey or chicken.
5. More fun to come this December! – Our Holiday Food & Toy Distribution Days continue this December. We look forward to working with all of our volunteers scheduled to help sort and hand out food and toys this month.
While all of our event volunteer needs have been met this month, we do invite the public to help by donating food or toys (our Amazon.com Wishlist offers a convenient way to shop for holiday presents http://bit.ly/Holiday2012Toy ) . We also have a few remaining families opporunities through our Family Sharing Program. For more information about how you can share the spirit of the holidays directly with local, low-income families, see our website for details (http://www.samaritanhouse.com/new/graphics/FamilySharingProgram.pdf).
Thank you to all our supporters, and Happy Holidays!
Samaritan House Blog 