BELTON, Texas — The Big Red Community is hosting a Thanksgiving Food Drive on Saturday, Nov. 9, and they need your help! It's all to provide warm meals to Belton ISD families.
The drive will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the parking lot between Sparta Elementary and Belton Middle School.
The Belton High School counseling department sponsors this event and is looking for non-perishable items and monetary donations to purchase turkeys so they can complete their food boxes.
The boxes will include canned goods like corn, green beans, vegetables and cranberry sauce as well as ingredients to make stuffing.
The department hopes to help the several families in the district who were affected by the tornadoes back in May.
In addition, the drive will provide meals through Project Heartbeat to families who qualify under the McKinney-Vento Act. This includes families who may not have housing.
"It's for our families that are homeless or experiencing being displaced from their permanent residence," Belton High School counselor Heather Davila said. "Those are the families that we want to make sure have access to warm meals because sometimes they're in hotels, sometimes they're in their cars. We just have different scenarios with our families."
The Big Red Community wants to make sure all families in need are fed, no matter what Belton school they go to.
"It grew into the Big Red Community trying to take care of all of our campuses, all of our elementary and middle schools and high schools," Davila explained. "They're out for a week, kids are home for nine days and may not have access to food through those nine days. This will help take care of that."
The Thespian Club has already donated 270 pounds of food. Clubs on campus will also be helping with sorting food and getting everything ready to go for Thanksgiving Day.
"We're just aiming high, I mean, as high as we can go, as many as we can fill," Davila said.