ATLANTA — For many people, the holidays can be a challenging time. Numbers from the Atlanta Community Food Bank show one in nine people in Georgia are food insecure.
One local organization spent this Thanksgiving trying to make the holidays more bearable, one meal at a time.
Nonprofit Hosea Helps handed out more than 1,200 meals to the hungry and homeless, including to several seniors at the Lillie R. Campbell House apartments. Sharon McCrary was one of them.
“We need your love and caring. A lot of people don't think about seniors that much, so we're really grateful for this," she said.
McCrary says the holidays can be tough for her. She says she tends to feel more lonely when Thanksgiving comes around.
“I miss my mother for one thing, and my brother... I have a brother who is deceased," she said. "We're stressed and depressed. A lot of people in here be depressed because a lot of people here don’t have family. And if they do, they don’t come around that much."
But this Thanksgiving, she's grateful for the free food delivered right to her home, thanks to Hosea Helps.
Hosea Helps Chief Operating Officer Afemo Omilami wants her and others to know they care.
“They're not out here to be alone in despair, hopeless, depressed," he said. "This can be a very challenging time. In the best of times, it can be challenging, much less when you are alone and you don't see family members and you can just feel so out of it. We want to just give somebody a little shot in the arm. Inspiration. Come on, 'you're going to be okay.'"
He says this is a labor of love that they have now been doing for over 50 years for those who need it the most.
"Inflation, the cost of the food prices... people are suffering," he said. "So whatever we can do to relieve some of that, that's what we're called to do because we were given birth out of the civil rights movement.”
Chef Tim Morgan, founder of Aprons for Change, said it's taken three days to collect food through purchases and donations to prepare for the nonprofit Hosea Helps to hand out to the hungry and homeless.
"We’re in production of fulfilling the orders for the 1,200 meals to be distributed on the streets and senior high-rise buildings across Metro Atlanta," Morgan said. “When life hits and things happen, we have to understand these are temporary moments and we have to take our innate ability we have about pressing forward and the ability to do well and keep pushing.”
From midnight to 7:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, volunteers packed trays with over 1,500 pounds of seasoned, sliced turkey, hundreds of pounds of dressing and over a thousand lbs. each of yams and green beans. Businesses and corporations donated much of the food.
Morgan said setting aside time to feed those in need is time invested, not wasted. This marks the second year Morgan has participated in cooking the food for Hosea Helps's Thanksgiving meal distribution.
“We’re hoping it not only hits their belly, but it hits their soul, reminding them people are here for them, even in the midst of a series of life's misfortunes," Morgan said. "What it looks like when we’re able to stand in the gap, build a bridge, iron sharpens iron and be the pillar for the community. We’re all here to help.”
Omilami said his father-in-law helped kickstart this initiative, which was inspired by the civil rights leaders who paved the way to help those in need.
“(My father-in-law) saw the man eating out of (a garbage can), and it broke his heart. He was saying, 'How is this possible?' Dr. King didn't give his life for you to be eating out of this garbage can. He went and bought the man some food. The man didn't even bother to unwrap the sandwich. He ate the paper and everything. He was so famished after that. Hosea Williams said, from now on, I'm going to be feeding people for Thanksgiving and Christmas," Omilami recalled.
Since then, Omilami and his wife, Elizabeth, have added other days to help, including Easter and MLK, to help brighten lives one meal at a time.
“It means a lot. It's caring and loving and you all care about it, and that's a good thing," McCrary added.