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Photo credit: Ava Zwolinski Thanksgiving events serve 500 in Portland and Westbrook Each year at Wayside Food Programs, our staff and volunteers work tirelessly to provide access to healthy food and a sense of belonging to our community meals guests, mobile food pantry clients, and many others in our community through our various programs and partnerships. The Thanksgiving holiday is in many ways a culmination of our year round efforts, acting as a celebration of food and community, two things we care deeply about. Our main Thanksgiving event takes place at the Portland Club, where this year we served over 250 guests a delicious, made-from-scratch Thanksgiving feast in the club's beautiful dining room. In addition to our Portland Club dinner, Thanksgiving meals were served that week at our regular community meals at the Salvation Army, Parkside Neighborhood Center, Westbrook Community Center and the Deering Center Community Church, reaching an additional 250 guests. All of the leftover food from our main meal was brought to the Preble Street Resource Center afterward to supplement their dinner that evening. Thank you to all of our many volunteers who helped prepare such a delightful feast, and to everyone who served, greeted, bussed, composted, and generally made everyone at our meal feel so welcomed. We received a lovely email from one of our meal guests, who had this to say: “I really appreciated the wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner you fine folks gave us! You folks were very respectful, kind and nurturing and created much goodwill for our community and the City of Portland. We got more attention, friendliness and care than one would find at many local, high end restaurants, if we could afford such places.” We would also like to thank the following donors and supporters who made the meal possible: The Portland Club, The Black Tie Company, DiMillo's On the Water, Hannaford Supermarkets, Whole Foods Market, Garbage To Garden, Waynflete, United Way of Greater Portland, Artful Cranberry, and Ava Zwolinski Photography. To see photos from Wayside's Thanksgiving celebration, please visit our Facebook album.