Helping the hungry on Thanksgiving

The House of the Refuge Helping Hand Food Pantry had plenty of volunteers to prepare and distribute meals to people in need on Thanksgiving.

Jeffrey St. Clair and his son Keenan volunteered during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Evelyn Vaughan, left, and Raphaela Walker dished out some food to those in need.

Katherine Williams, the founder of the Helping Hand Ministries, handed out meals.

Many little helping hands made a big difference last week. From left were Bryce Irvins-Austin, 8, Jahron Raymond, 7, Christian Wiggins, 10, and Jason Raymond, 8, at the House of Refuge in Baldwin.

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While most Baldwin families spend Thanksgiving by surrounded family and friends eating a delicious meal and watching some football, many others aren’t as fortunate. To help make sure local families had a hot meal to eat on the holiday synonymous with food, The House of Refuge Helping Hands Ministry hosted its first ever Thanksgiving event.

The ministry, established in 2009, has a food pantry that opens every Saturday for local families to come by and pick up some groceries. But, according to Sandra Brown, the ministry’s executive director, people in need would often say they hoped to get a hot meal on Thanksgiving without having to travel to other communities.

Since the space at The House of Refuge is small, people came in on Thanksgiving afternoon, picked up a meal and went home. Brown said about 45 families came in during the event.

The food was prepared at the volunteers’ homes and brought in for serving. About 15 people came in to serve food and helped out around the pantry, in addition to staff. During the year, volunteers come in during the week to stock the pantry’s shelves and pick up donated food. On Saturdays, three or four volunteers distribute the food to people in need. L.I. Cares and Island Harvest, local organizations that look to feed the hungry, donate much of the food, but donations are also accepted from parishioners and community members.

According to Brown, the people who attended were thankful to have a place in Baldwin to get a hot meal, including a mother of three who told Brown she wouldn’t have had anywhere else to go on Thanksgiving had it not been for the event.

“It was rewarding,” Brown, a Baldwin resident, said. “It really made me feel like what I was doing really does matter. A lot of times we come in and try to help, but you’re not quite sure you’re helping.

“We’re not here for appearances,” she added. “We’re here because we want to be.”

Brown has been with The House Of Refuge Ministries, Inc. since 2009 and the church’s founder Apostle Dr. Katherine J. Williams gave her the go ahead to launch the food pantry soon after she started.

“Anybody could open a church and read the bible,” Brown said, “but often time people are hungry physically. So if you’re going to have people physically hungry they cant receive much of anything else.

“We wanted to make sure that if we were going to help in a spiritual aspect we would also help in a natural aspect,” she added.

Brown is hoping to expand the event next year to get more families who are in need to come out and noted that people do not have to be parishioners to seek assistance.