Second Harvest 2nd Annual Christmas Wing-Ding

Blake Haynes from Second Harvest joins us to give details on why their 2nd Annual Christmas Wing-Ding event is more important than ever during the pandemic

Socks.

C1 blake hades joins us and we're talking about second harvest wing ding.

Welcome, blake.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about the event and why you made there's plenty of time for people to get turkeys or food.

Yeah, the holiday season every year is a more stressful time.

You get the pressures of the holiday season itself along with bills are starting to rise.

Heat bills and other bills starting to rise.

Just causes the extra stressors like i was talking about.

This is a great event.

We will give out 750 holiday boxes for this event.

Great opportunity for those in need to get their needs supplemented and be able to provide that holiday meal for them and their family.

Just awesome opportunity.

Blake you know how close this is to my heart.

I love that box distribution idea.

Tell us about the voucher distribution.

This is going to happen on december 3rd from 8:00 a.m.

To 7:00 p.m.

What other details can you tell us?

These are first come first served while supplies last.

750 of those vouchers, first come, first served.

Those individuals will come at second harvest in st.

Joseph, missouri.

One thing that a lot of people don't understand is this can serve all 19 of our counties.

Those surrounding counties, you can come in and use the vouchers, brown, atchison.

Come in if you're in need.

You need a photo id and also we're going to require masks as you come in the building.

We will be practicing social distancing.

Making sure those coming in staff and volunteer will help us with that.

We are offering also those who are coming in know a family or individual that is in need this holiday season, they can bring that individual or someone from that household an id from the household and pick up a voucher for them.

Now, when they come through the line, we will verify who did we give that to, that way there's not a passing around of vouchers or anything like that.

Just making sure we're serving 750 families that are really in need this holiday season.

Just so important and such a crucial time with everything that's gone on this year with the pandemic.

So when you obtain the voucher and come back on december 18th and pick up the box.

Blake, tell us how successful have these turkey vouchers been this holiday season?

It's been great.

After christmas, the christmas time of the year, we will have given out 1500 total holiday meals through our turkey day distribution that happened in november and the christmas wing ding that will happen in december.

Like we said, just a great amount of individuals that have been helped.

Families that have been helped.

It's such a crucial time with the job losses we have seen with the furloughs we have seen throughout the pandemic, our distributions have just sky rocketed.

In early november, we distributed 2.7 million more meals than the same time frame last year.

Mid march to that beginning of november.

So we're seeing a lot of people in need and seeking resources we're able to provide and happy to be able to supplement their needs.

Blake haynes from second harvest.

Thank you for being with us