BOSTON — The pandemic may have caused many cancelations and changes this holiday season, but The Home for Little Wanderers got some surprise help to be able to pull off their event when the virus was threatening to cancel it.
The Boston private non-profit, which has been helping families for over 200 years, holds yearly food donation programs to help families struggling during the holiday season. This year they were committed to continuing to help those families out, despite a global pandemic.
Days before Thanksgiving, The Home for Little Wanderers bagged up a full dinner including a turkey, sides and a pie for families in need. This year they are helping more than 500 families.
“Their memories of Thanksgiving in the past are not good ones,” said Rick Hopt, who works at The Home for Little Wanderers. “There are bad things that have happened into their past and this can be a really stressful day.”
But, because of the pandemic, the food drive almost didn’t happen this year.
St. Athanasius, the Great Greek Orthodox Church in Arlington and Metropolis of Boston, figured out a way to find enough donations, volunteers and helped The Home for Little Wanderers pull it off.
“I kept telling them why I didn’t think we could do it and they kept telling me why we could do it,” said Hopt.
“We worked together to collect 425 meals, not just turkeys, entire meals for all of these families,” said Paul Tsitsopoulos, of St Athanasius the Great Greek Orthodox Church.
Metropolis of Boston also offered a larger location for the work to be done so volunteers had enough room to socially distance and follow COVID-19 protocols.
“We couldn’t let something like this go away,” said Tsitsopoulos.
After the bags were assembled, they were put into social workers cars and driven to families throughout the greater Boston area.
“Why is this is a beautiful sight? It’s because I know there are going to be 525 new memories for families to lean on and turn to in the future,” said Hopt.
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