Power PACKS

conditions of many families in the area. This was November of 2014. I went home and talked to Will, crying about the situation of so many hungry kids in our area. We knew we had to do something. Not really knowing what to do, we decided to host a community Christmas dinner. Instead of Christmas gifts being exchanged between my husband and me, we were going to feed as many people as we could. We had a month to plan everything. I went from store to store to buy what we needed, and was blown away by the kindness of store employees and customers who overheard what we were doing. One lady even paid for my entire cart of groceries for the dinner! We shopped sales and got donations. Fox Carolina news even came to my house to do an interview! When all was said and done, 26 turkeys were donated to us, and we received over $150 in gift cards. My niece and nephew - 7 and 10 years old at the time - asked for canned goods for Christmas, and also packed bags to send home with the families that came. All the turkeys were cooked on Christmas morning. Thanks to a huge volunteer turnout, we were ready to serve Christmas dinner. We ended up hosting 39 families. We had so much food that everyone was also able to take food home. While this was a great turnout, it was still less than we had hoped for. Some of the people there told us about kids that were home with no one to drive them. Or seniors in the same situation. So we loaded up our cars and went to those homes to deliver the food directly to them. Later that night, Will and I sat down and decided we didn’t want this to be just a one-time event. We needed to have a continuing impact. So we called the local school after Christmas break, and discovered they weren’t sponsored by the back pack program. Will and I started with helping two children, and we are now providing for ten. But there are so many more children in need, and it is time to expand this program in order to feed all of these children.