Charity scrambles to feed thousands more for Thanksgiving
Published: October 27, 2005
Organizers of Atlanta’s biggest Thanksgiving dinner are two months behind on donations and fundraising and will have at least 7,000 more mouths to feed this year - many of them Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Elisabeth Omilami, daughter of the late Hosea Williams and co-director of Hosea Feed the Hungry and the Homeless said she expects the crowd of 21,000 to grow by about a third at Turner Field.
Thanksgiving is the first of three holidays in as many months for the charity, which also feeds more than 36,000 on Christmas and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
In the seven weeks since Katrina sent thousands of evacuees to Atlanta, Omilami said she has served more than 6,800 of them, providing food, clothes, rental assistance, gas and long-distance telephone cards and helping them find jobs.
“It wasn’t even a choice to make,” Omilami said at a news conference Wednesday. “We didn’t have to have a board meeting to decide if we were going to help those people. We were already doing it.”
The charity also served more than 1,200 Atlantans - stretching their resources to the limit at the time of year when they are most needed. Still, Omilami said, Thanksgiving dinner will happen for the 36th time.
“The plates will be just as hefty. The cornucopia will overflow, because God will say, ‘Because you take care of others, I will take care of you,’” she said.
But Omilami admitted it will be a challenge to find the 4,000 turkeys, 8,000 cans of corn and green beans and countless other ingredients, toiletries and other in-kind items she provides, since donations have suffered because of Katrina. Omilami said four donors were unable to participate this year.
“We’re just now mounting a three-month campaign with four weeks to go,” she said.
Civil rights activist Hosea Williams began the charity in 1971, serving 100 men a week each Sunday. Omilami took the reins in 2000 after her father’s death and runs the program with her husband, Afemo.
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