This year, in place of Windward’s annual Fall Festival Dinner with Allies for Every Child, the School and AFEC partnered together to provide families with meals and treats that they could enjoy in the comfort and safety of their own homes.
Windward families contributed to this amazing cause by way of creating gift baskets filled with non-perishables for Thanksgiving Dinner and/or donating Amazon gift cards to help support Allies families. On November 17, Windward Service Learning held a virtual event where Allies Volunteer Coordinators spoke to our community about their organization, followed by Q&A. A Windward parent then demonstrated how to organize and decorate the baskets.
Because of the overwhelming generosity of our Windward community, Allies was able to distribute Fall Festival dinner baskets and 85 frozen turkeys to families at their drive-thru event on November 21! We received over $4k in gift cards as well.
Rebecca Salsman, Community Engagement Manager at Allies for Every Child, said “The event was amazing. We had the most positive comments and no upset parents, it was incredible. We had folks lining up starting at about 7:45 a.m., we opened the gates a little early, and we were done by 12:30 p.m.. We somehow magically had EXACTLY the right amount of everything for everyone.”
“I cannot thank you and the Windward families enough,” Rebecca added. “This was one of our smoothest running events and families were so pleased with everything. I loved the personal touch in each basket and even the volunteers were commenting on how great they were!”
