Annual Turkey Drive to help others
Paris Ghassemian, 19, journalism creative writing and Andraya Quesada, 18, literary journalism sort through the variety of canned foods donated towards the Saddleback Turkey Drive. (Sean Lara/Lariat )
Saddleback College’s Associated Student Government hosted its annual Turkey Drive last week. Yesterday was the last day to make donations. As every year, ASG’s goal is to reach out to families in need with their Thanksgiving dinner.
“We work with EOPS (Extended Opportunity Program and Services) to gather donations for dinners for these families,” Brent Palmer, 21, cultural anthropology, said. Palmer is currently an active member of ASG as vice president of its events cabinet.
According to Saddleback’s page, EOPS is a program that assists students with educational and socioeconomic disadvantaged backgrounds.
ASG took a lot of time to publicize for this event through posters, flyers, publicity requests and even Facebook. In the past, ASG has also turned to community stores for donations.
However this year, ASG ran into problems with soliciting at stores for this particular event.
“I was on student government last year when this event was happening; it was a slightly better turn out last year because grocery stores in which we solicit donations from were more open to letting us do that,” Palmer said. “This year we have been running into problems when asking the stores to let us solicit.
Despite losing grocery stores as another resource to publicize the event, many people took the initiative and time to get involved to help others.
During this event, ASG noticed that canned food was a popular item donated.
Boxes were set up for donations of canned and boxed food in the ASG office located in the Student Service Center, Room 211. Others made monetary contributions. In addition, ASG members set up a table in the Quad to accept donations.
“We [tried] to get an equal amount of everything donated [in order to] form complete meals for these families,” Palmer said.
To further promote the Turkey Drive, ASG held a barbecue yesterday in the Quad. Students who brought cans of food or contributed two dollars received a hot dog.
“I hope that people would want to get involved in an important cause such as this drive, and [the] BBQ [was] a little thank you for those [students] that got involved,” Palmer said.
Palmer encourages students to get involved in the future because their participation goes towards a good cause.