It’s the time of year for giving and being thankful for our communities. The Rotary Club of Aggieland celebrated the season by packaging and delivering Thanksgiving Baskets to 600 families in the Brazos Valley community.
Last week, 200 volunteers, including Rotary members, student organizations from Texas A&M University, and other community groups came together at the A&M Church of Christ in College Station, Texas, to assemble and deliver a family feast. Each Thanksgiving Basket contained a frozen turkey, canned vegetables, mashed potatoes, muffin mix, stuffing, rolls, gravy and other Thanksgiving food staples.
The Thanksgiving Baskets program launched in 1997 to provide meals for families in need. That year, 12 baskets were delivered. This year’s event served the largest number of families to date.
“The club has been doing this for 25 years,” said Fred Patterson, Rotarian. “It’s been a real labor of love, and we appreciate the help we get, and we enjoy sending this out to the public hoping they’ll have a great Thanksgiving that they may or may not have been able to purchase.”
Tatiana Rivera, volunteer service chair for the Rotary club, started as a volunteer with the baskets three years ago and was excited to see the program continue to grow.
“It’s been an incredible experience being able to start from a volunteer to now helping lead this incredible event,” Rivera said. “It’s been an honor.”
Sponsors for this year’s event included:
- H-E-B
- A&M Church of Christ
- Morningstar Storage
- Brazos Valley Builders Care
- Brazos Valley Women’s Center PA
- Caldwell Country Chevrolet
- Citizens Bank
- Fundamental Wealth Advisors
- General Truck Body
- Jennifer A. Hathaway, DDS
- Oishi Asian Fusion Sushi & Bar
- Patterson Architects
- Ramirez-Simon Engineering, LLC
- SSC Services for Education
“Thank you to everybody for volunteering and giving their time and resources,” said Elena Scoggins, club president.
“It takes a lot of hands to help make this project come to fruition,” Rivera said. “Next year we would love to have more organizations and local businesses partner with us. We want to be able to include more of our community to help others in need.”
