We’re Talking Lots Of Turkey Over Here
Help Us Celebrate A Delicious Holiday
By Rebecca Born
Executive Director, GPHC, Inc.
Hi everyone, it’s nearly Thanksgiving! This is a very special time here at Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. It’s our time to give thanks for our wonderful neighborhood and treating our clients as well as local elementary school families with all the fixings for a full turkey dinner.
To pull it off, we need your help.
Dinner isn’t just the turkey right? It’s mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, cranberry sauce, hot rolls, lots of vegetables, and of course, sweet potato pie.
That bird has to be cooked, too, so we also provide a roasting pan and a bag to every family that signs up. Does that sound like a lot of effort? It is. And so worth it. In 2013 we served 57 families. Last year we incorporated families from Smith Elementary and Turkey Up at Park Hill Elementary and we served 177 families.
This year the organizers behind the Daddy Bruce Randolph program that usually provides meals to 8,000 Denverites announced the loss of funding, putting that program in jeopardy. In addition, Rosa Linda’s Mexican Café in northwest Denver is closing and will not be serving its annual Thanksgiving feast to 6,000 people.
Over here at Greater Park Hill, we were already planning on serving more families than last year. So with the news that other programs are in jeopardy, it’s safe to say we should be prepared to take on even more. This year we are aiming to accommodate around 200 families of four.
What do we need? See the accompanying form? That is our checklist we have taped to every box so we can make sure that everyone has their full box of delicious goodies.
Some people like to buy enough for a full family meal for one or two families, so here is your cheat sheet! Or, you may have a membership to a bulk warehouse and would prefer to buy a few cases of one thing – that’s awesome too!
We always appreciate gift cards as well, as we expect we’ll have some purchasing to do. We will be getting pies from Sprouts and the brown and serve rolls from King Soopers. (If you happen to want to load up on those for us, that’d be great!)
We also need turkeys. One of our past sources that provided about 50 birds and 50 five-pound bag of potatoes is not available to us this year. This is a heavy blow, but I have no doubt our neighbors will come through for us. We need about 20-30 pre-cooked turkey breasts for single seniors living in the neighborhood. In addition we need all sizes of turkeys – from smallish ones to serve a family of two to three, to the huge birds for our families of 10-plus.
Would you like to help sort food, pack boxes, or distribute boxes to families? We’ll need help the week of Nov. 16, Monday-Friday 9am-3pm. Then we’ll need help again Monday, Nov. 23 and Tuesday, Nov. 24. I’ll be posting more information about the volunteer shifts on our Greater Park Hill Facebook page.
Thanks again for making this such an amazing place to call home.