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Each year we hold a food drive for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays. We partner with local food stores to gather food in front of the respective stores to benefit the needy in our community.
Our entire club works hard on this and utilizes volunteers from the community and the support of our local Interact Club. (who can say no to a kid asking you to help?).
Our need for a grant is to fill in the missing items from the collection. We get tons of potatoes, and other items, but fall far short on the Turkey and Ham donations. Last year we provided 180 dinners at Thanksgiving and around 100 dinners at Christmas. That's a total of 280 dinners. At this time, turkeys are selling for $2.19/lb making a 16 lb turkey cost $35.00. If we get 80 turkeys donated and make up the other 200 with purchase, our cost will be $7,008.00. If Turkey prices drop to an average of $20 per turkey, we will still be spending $4,000.
As stated earlier, this project provides much needed Holiday Dinners to local charities including Family Assistance Ministries, Laura's House for Battered Women and our local Marine Families.
Addendum to Project Description (added after the project was signed)
Addendum 1 - Financing
Last year we donated 180 dinners to families at Thanksgiving and 100 to families at Christmas. Families are selected according to need as designated by agencies in San Clemente and on Camp Pendleton Marine Base. Half of these dinners include Turkeys and half include Hams. While we do receive all side dishes/deserts as donations, we have to purchase most of the main dish course(Turkeys and Hams).Our estimated budget is below:
280 dinners (combined Christmas and Thanksgiving:
140 Turkeys @ 15.00 each = $2,100.00
140 Hams @ $15.00 each = $2,100.00
Total budget for dinners = $4,200.00
Much of the food donation also comes from our own pockets as well as our Club money
Every Rotarian in our club participates in the food drive which we hold for 2 weekends in November (Nov. 15-16 and Nov. 22-23) and 1 weekend in December (December 13-14)
This is followed up by a special Club meeting just to pack the boxes which are then picked up by representatives of the different agencies and the Marines.
Publicity for Rotary is garnered through flyers handed out to potential donors, press releases submitted to the OC Register, as well as the two local papers in San Clemente, the SC Times and the Sun Post. It also appears on the Club's Facebook.
Our community has come to rely on us for help at this time of year as we have done this for many years running. It has become a community wide effort that our residents look forward to each year. We also involve our Interact Club in the entire process.
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