Hope Ministries is committed to serving the homeless in central Iowa, and in line with that continued their annual Thanksgiving meal give away this year. There were 3,000 meals packaged for delivery and pickup given out at their Bethel Mission location.
Major Gifts Manager Fred Hollister said this year being a non traditional Thanksgiving day that giving out these traditional Thanksgiving meals is important to the community.
"We hope to provide people a meal that they could enjoy and try to make it as close to a traditional Thanksgiving," Hollister said.
Working within the restrictions of COVID-19 also led to making this event smaller than it had been last year. The 3,000 meals is the capacity of using the Bethel Mission location only, but last year they also used satellite locations in Ankeny and West Des Moines to deliver more meals.
"You know that the need is still there," Hollister said. "We serve meals here, 365 days a year. So this is our Thanksgiving meal."
They limited the number of volunteers this year to keep proper social distancing in place, but are still actively looking for more volunteers. Hollister directs people to their Hope Ministries website to find out about more volunteer opportunities coming up and or opportunities to make donations so they can continue feeding central Iowans.
"We've had a lot of positive feedback," Hollister said. "A lot of folks unfortunately, this may be the only meal that they get today and that's an issue for them. And of course with COVID, a lot of families are- it's harder for people to be together so this is an outreach for people that really need it."