Over 1,000 community members received meals from the 10th annual Feed the Streetz Outreach Thanksgiving Blessing event.
By Elissa Jorgensen
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Jason Janik / Special Contributor
People from all walks of life lined up by the entrance to Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center on Saturday afternoon to receive homemade Thanksgiving meals.
Along the side of the MLK center, dozens of volunteers passed out turkeys and boxes of groceries to people waiting in a long line of cars.
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Children ran across the sidewalk, hugging volunteers and playing games while their parents grabbed meals.
About 1,000 community members received meals from the 10th annual Feed the Streetz Outreach Thanksgiving Blessing event in collaboration with the MLK center.
Feed the Streetz has organized the event for the last 10 years to provide “blessing bags” to the community, while the MLK center has provided Thanksgiving baskets to families in need every year.
The blessing bags include food and hygiene essentials.
Jason Janik / Special Contributor
“I went from a three-man show to having a solid team of 12, and they’re all volunteers,” said Crystal Robertson, founder and executive director of Feed the Streetz. “No one person is bigger than the other. They all go hand in hand, and solidarity is the key.”
About 25 community groups and nonprofit organizations come together to help the event run smoothly, Robertson said.
Robertson said she started the organization to bridge the resource gap in overlooked communities and give back to where she came from, as she once experienced homelessness.
“I wanted to use food as the tool to knock on people’s doors and find out what they needed most,” Robertson said.
The Thanksgiving Blessing event also has a third component, where volunteer drivers take meals and deliver them to those in need around Dallas.
Pamela Jones, MLK center manager, said it is amazing to see the immediate impact of providing support to the local community. Thanksgiving meals are one of about 20 events the center holds every year.
“We only have 400 registration slots to fill, and this year we got around 17,000 hits,” Jones said.
The leftover food from the events gets distributed to volunteers or used in the meals that are driven out to community members, Jones said.
Tiara Cooper, executive director of In Defense of Black Lives, said these events do not just make up a moment; they are a movement.
“Handing out these meals isn’t just a transaction,” Cooper said. “It’s all about building relationships with the community.”
Feed the Streetz has a mobile pantry four times a month and holds an annual Christmas party for underprivileged youth. This year, the party will be held on Dec. 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas at Oak Cliff.
For more information on upcoming Feed the Streetz events, visit its website or Instagram page.
Elissa Jorgensen is a breaking news reporter at The Dallas Morning News. She is a graduate of Texas State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English and master’s degree in mass communication. Elissa previously reported for the Houston Chronicle and Texas Community Health News.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
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