The Heart of Stark: Interfaith partners team up to provide nearly 1,000 Thanksgiving meals

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For more than 30 years, Thanksgiving Baskets Downtown (TBD) has united faith communities and civic organizations in Canton as an all-volunteer effort to provide families with food at Thanksgiving.

Thanks to hundreds of volunteers and donations from the community, the nonprofit was able to provide 980 Stark County families with ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner this past weekend, including a turkey for each family.

“We've been doing this interfaith, all-volunteer effort going on 40 years,” said M.L. Schultze, TBD trustee and a former Repository reporter and editor. “For most of that time, the partners contributed food items to go with the hundreds of turkeys we purchased. It was a hectic and lovely time sorting and stuffing bags that completely filled the St. Paul's Guild Hall.”

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When TBD needed to adapt to COVID-19 regulations in 2020, the organization adopted a new approach.

The turkeys remained the centerpiece of its program, but registration and distribution were moved outdoors to the driveway of the Cultural Center for the Arts in downtown Canton. As the families received their turkeys, TBD opted to give gift certificates to the local nonprofit grocer StarkFresh for side dish ingredients because the communal effort of collecting food items to distribute wasn’t feasible.

While the nonprofit assumed its normal operation would return when the restrictions were lessened, it discovered something interesting— many families found the gift certificates a better fit for their own dietary-specific needs.

Since then, the organization has continued to provide gift certificates and give families the ability to shop for the rest of their Thanksgiving meal.

“Instead of us collecting and distributing the instant mashed potatoes, green beans, corn and other ingredients for side dishes, families get to have a shopping experience at StarkFresh and utilize the store’s reasonable prices. They have loved being able to do that,” said Linda Kendrick, TBD trustee. “We feel we are fulfilling the needs of the people.”

Volunteers assist TBD in three ways: registering families to receive turkeys during the sign-up day, helping with the turkey distribution day and assisting at the StarkFresh campus during the week to accommodate the extra volume of shoppers using the gift certificates.

As part of the partnership, the participating organizations also hold an annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service — a joining together of music, prayer and messages from a wide variety of churches, Temple Israel and the Islamic Society — the Tuesday before Thanksgiving at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The offering collected every year at this service starts the funding for the next year of TBD’s expenses— which total $35,000 each year.

“Everyone that comes through the distribution line thanks us and explains that we have no idea how much the donated food means to their family,” said Kendrick. “It makes you feel really good about volunteering and making the holidays better for others.”

Participating organizations that volunteer, donate and assist with distribution include: ​ArtsinStark, Canton City Lutheran Church, Christ Presbyterian Church, Church of the Covenant Presbyterian Church, Crossroads United Methodist, Fishers Foods, Grace UCC, Islamic Society of NE Ohio, J. Babe Stearn Community Center, New Vision UCC, St. Anthony’s / All Saints Catholic Church, St. George Romanian Catholic Church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, StarkFresh, Temple Israel, Trinity UCC and Unitarian Universalist.

Learn more at www.thanksgivingbasketscanton.org.

Stark Community Foundation helps individuals, families, businesses and nonprofits achieve their philanthropic goals. The Foundation and its family of donors have granted $230 million to nonprofits since 1963. Learn more at impact at www.starkcf.org.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Faith partners help Thanksgiving Baskets Downtown thrive for holiday