Spirit of giving alive and well in the western communities
WELLINGTON - Despite the economy the spirit of giving seemed to be alive and well this year for Thanksgiving in the western communities. Food drives in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach both exceeded their goals.
"It was fantastic," said Meridith Tuckwood, Wellington's neighborhood advocate. "We had an overwhelming response. We had an outpouring of volunteers to help. I had more people than I knew what to do with."
Wellington's food drive, sponsored by the Safe Neighborhoods Initiative Office, had a goal of feeding 75 families. Instead they collected enough food for 99 complete Thanksgiving dinners. In fact, even after they had packed up 99 dinners they had so much smaller food items leftover that they were able to pack an additional 10 boxes, which they sent to Riviera Beach to help feed the homeless.
"This was just a great example of the community coming together to help the less fortunate," she said. "There was just an outpouring of people wanting to do the right thing. Not only did we take care of our community we got to help Riviera Beach as well."
Tuckwood said for Christmas they're launching a toy drive that will start Dec. 1, but they haven't hammered out all of the details yet.
While in Royal Palm Beach the Royal Palm Beach Covenant Church teamed up with the Royal Palm Beach Rotary Club as well as the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office and Palm Beach Fire Rescue to help collect and distribute Thanksgiving dinners. Their goal was 500 dinners.
Pastor Michael Rose said the day before Thanksgiving they had been able to collect enough food for 600 dinners and by the middle of the afternoon he said they were still collecting food.
"It was wonderful. People are a lot more understanding this year. We had a lot of volunteers. I'm very very pleased. Hopefully next year we can do even greater, but we hope the need is not great," he said. "Hopefully this spirit of giving will carry over to Christmas."
He said they don't have a drive planned for Christmas, but they do have a food pantry all year round and he's hoping that they'll have enough food for anyone that comes during the holidays.
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