Austinville Community Thanksgiving Dinner

Giving Back to Give Thanks

Thanksgiving is a holiday that we all love, filled with family, friends, football, and (of course) food, it brings a sense of comfort and belonging. In it, we strive to remember all the blessings we have been given and to cultivate a thankful, grateful heart. We spend this day wrapped in family traditions and the warmth of great food and the love of our friends and family. Deep down though, we also all know there are others “out there” who are alone or hungry at Thanksgiving, and we feel like we ought to do something about it. Often, we will send money to a favorite charity - and that is critical - we obviously need donors to make this happen - and places like the North Alabama Food Bank or the Salvation Army rely on donations received at Thanksgiving and Christmas to provide for important programs they execute all year long. But if you have no money to spare, or want to teach your children to give, or just want to find a personal connection to the act of giving back, this is the opportunity you have been looking for.

Our Thanksgiving Dinner feeds 1200-1300 people every Thanksgiving. We deliver Thanksgiving meals to shut-ins, the elderly, and homeless who will be alone this Thanksgiving, replacing Meals-on-Wheels which does not operate on Thanksgiving Day in our area. We also operate a dining room for anyone in the community who wishes to join us for the meal, and we serve prisoners from our local community jail who are separated from family, and who (based on good behavior) are supervised and brought by officers to the hall before we close. Serving those who are forgotten and alone on this day of celebration and thanksgiving is an extremely tangible and real way to connect to those who are less fortunate than we are.

This page is about telling you how to get involved and give back. There are lots of ways to get involved and help, from helping set up and prepare before the big day (it’s a big job with lots of prep that takes several days and we never have enough help!), making a dessert to share, to cooking and serving and delivering meals on Thanksgiving morning, to helping clean up after the meal. Of course, you can always make a donation to help with expenses - and any money raised and not used for this year’s dinner will be donated to the North Alabama Food Bank.