Giving Back to the Community

With the onset of the winter holiday season, a number of IBSS employees gave thanks by helping assemble Thanksgiving food baskets for families in need through Project GiveBack.  

This year, demand for food, especially around holidays, increased due to the number of families impacted by the pandemic. Project GiveBack has been building community through service and held it’s 26th annual Thanksgiving Food Distribution program this year. The organization assembles food boxes that contain the makings for a Thanksgiving dinner as well as food for additional meals. Much, but not all, of the food is donated to Project GiveBack through sponsors and the community, but the organization still has to budget to purchase certain items that will be donated to needy families. Community volunteers then gather to help assemble and distribute food boxes. 

Food boxes contain turkey, whole chicken, sirloin tips, breakfast sausage, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, apples, oranges, and elbow macaroni. 

Project GiveBack started out this event trying to make less go farther. The vendor where they normally purchase turkeys was not able to meet the demand due to the impact on farms because of COVID, so they had to turn to another vendor. The new vendor’s price was significantly higher than what they’d budgeted. Even so, they got their turkeys and were ready to have volunteers assemble the food boxes. 

In years past, they held one large gathering the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving to assemble all food boxes during the course of several hours, however this year they had to break up assembly over two days and across a total of nine separate locations in order to allow for social distancing. 

There were also challenges with distribution. Previously, after volunteers assembled food boxes, the volunteers would then take the boxes to the homes of those receiving the food. In order to be mindful of health issues, a different delivery system had to be implemented and families had to make arrangements to pick up the boxes at a central location. 

Donning masks and gloves, ten volunteers from IBSS donated their time to assemble food boxes. The IBSS team along with all the other volunteers at their location assembled boxes for 500 families. During the food box assembly, the IBSS team was able to enjoy the music of a local D.J. and spend time socializing with other and other volunteers. 

“I’m glad that IBSS was able to support a mission that was near and dear to me. This year was particularly challenging due to COVID. Individual donations were down this year. Traditionally families that gave were receiving assistance this year. Even with costs increasing, Project GiveBack was able to give more to the community this year.”, said Nijel Redrick, one of our Program Managers, who helped coordinate this volunteer event for IBSS. Nijel is also on the Project GiveBack Planning Committee. 

Going into this Thanksgiving, Project GiveBack had a goal of assisting 2,500 families. Even with numerous setbacks, they were able to give back to 3,330 families!

IBSS is grateful to the staff members who volunteered their time.