Local group helps needy on holidays

Outreach provides food for Elmont

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For most people, Thanksgiving is a time for families to reconnect and bond over heaping plates of turkey and sides. For over a quarter-million Long Islanders, however, Thanksgiving is just another day without food. The volunteers at St. Vincent de Paul Outreach are making sure that people who are hungry on Thanksgiving in Elmont will get the food they need despite their financial hardship.

Two area food banks, Long Island Cares and Island Harvest, service more than 280,000 people each year, according to a 2010 study on hunger on Long Island. They distribute food to local pantries and soup kitchens, and community members register with those outreach centers to receive assistance.

Last Saturday, volunteers at St. Vincent’s loaded more than 120 boxes, filled with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing, into vans and delivered them to people throughout Elmont. Long Island Cares and Island Harvest donated the majority of the food; local residents and businesses also contributed to the effort.

Outreach Co-president Magda Sabet has been volunteering at the center for 11 years. “I always wanted to help the poor,” Sabet said. “I like when somebody is in need of something, I’m able to help them if I can.”

In order for people to receive that help, they must register with the outreach center and live within the St. Vincent de Paul parish. As previously reported in the Herald, the price of turkeys has increased due to a shortage. This has been felt by the outreach center, as there as been a drop-off in donations, Sabet said. Diane Velazquez, a former resident of Elmont, dropped off a turkey on November 12, and the staff was appreciative.

“It’s a blessing,” said, outreach Co-coordinator Danny Mirro. “Every time somebody drops it off we’re thankful.”

Velazquez and her husband moved from Elmont to Westbury in 2008, but she always remembered the aid she had received from the outreach center. “We had fallen on a lot of hard times over here, and they helped us out,” she said. “We needed a bed, and they sent us over to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, on Jericho Turnpike, and we got a bed. They were very good to me and my husband.”

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