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Volunteers Show Thanksgiving Spirit
DESA meal

DeKalb County showed its Thanksgiving spirit last week as hundreds of volunteers gathered at the DeKalb Community Center in order to help those in need have a happy holiday. The DeKalb Emergency Services Association’s (DESA) annual tradition served over 1,000 meals over the holiday as volunteers gave up part of their Thanksgiving to help their fellow citizens.

“We do this every year and have been since 2017,” said DESA spokesperson Blake Cantrell. “We are delivering 1,035 meals today. We prep them and deliver them to anybody in DeKalb County that calls and needs a meal. We have households with one person and households with 10 people. If someone asks for a meal, they get a meal.”

We started this in 2017. I used to do this with another organization, and now the Emergency Services organizes this. But, if you look around, we have volunteers from everywhere. We have volunteers that come and do this with us every year, and we have new people that are doing this for the first time. This has grown exponentially. The first time we delivered around 200 meals.”

The DeKalb Emergency Services Association has members from all branches of the emergency departments, including fire, rescue, law enforcement, and EMS. “We’re just the organizing body. We use volunteers from all over the county. We have people that bake and bring in desserts. We’ll make plates and hopefully everyone will get a nice Thanksgiving dinner. This year we’re serving turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, roll, and a homemade dessert.”

Cantrell said that if you would like to support the DESA meals financially you can go to Wilson Bank & Trust to make a donation, or to the DeKalb ESA website to access the Pay Pal link there. “We buy the majority of the food for the meals we prepare, including the turkeys and hams. We also take Thanksgiving donations for desserts,” said Cantrell.

DESA will be conducting another meal delivery on Tuesday, December 24, for Christmas. To get your name on the delivery list call 615-464-0575 or 615-712-4286 or visit www.dekalbesa.com/meal.