Each One, Feed One

For yet another year, we returned to Kappa V/MS 518 to participate in their Thanksgiving Day service program. Four years ago when we first started working with Earl James, the event coordinator and a fellow NPHC member, the request was for volunteers to help serve the Thanksgiving meal to the guests who were being transported from local shelters.

Since then, the number of volunteers has quadrupled so we’ve found another inventive way to add value to the program – by donating travel-sized toiletries to the guests. Each year in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Day, EKC Sorors purchase items such as deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, lotion, shampoo/conditioner, washcloths, mouthwash, wipes and hand sanitizer, and create “goodie bags” for the guests to take with them. 

This year, 13 Sorors and their family and friends created more than 125 goodie bags for the guests. Although only 35 bags were distributed at the event, the remaining bags were donated to the Women in Need shelter in Brownsville.

One of the highlights of the day was when some of our guests truly exemplified the meaning of the season by asking for additional bags to take back to wheelchair-bound shelter residents who did not attend the event. In speaking with the guests, we also found out about a nearby emergency housing facility servicing 200 women – another opportunity to serve our community!

It was great to meet and interact with our fellow NPHC members from Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. who manned the food stations and provided the dinner service.