BC3 needs turkeys for holiday meal distribution
In addition to taking home bags full of books and papers during Thanksgiving week, many Butler County Community College students will head home with meal boxes for the holiday break.
Mikayla Moretti, director of special events for BC3 and the BC3 Education Foundation, said the foundation is expecting to distribute 50 to 70 food boxes Nov. 16 and 17, each of which is intended to have enough food for a family Thanksgiving dinner.
The foundation is packing boxes with almost all of the fixings — corn, green beans, cranberry sauce and the like — and Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market and Mainstreet Bake Shop, both in Saxonburg, are donating bread and sweet items to the Pioneer Pantry.
The organizers of the pantry are, however, still waiting on one crucial item.
“We’re trying to get a turkey donation or turkey reduced-cost options from somewhere local,” Moretti said. “Typically we purchase from a local butcher, but our costs have just skyrocketed. We just have not had any luck getting turkey.”
The Pioneer Pantry has food stocked for students and faculty members of the college regularly, and Moretti said it served 838 people in the 2022-23 academic year. It started distributing food in the 2019-20 academic year, and about 340 people used the pantry throughout that period.
The BC3 Education Foundation manages the pantry and the distribution of meal boxes for the Thanksgiving and winter semester breaks. Moretti said the foundation typically packs as many nonperishable items in the meal boxes as possible, as well as fresh produce the college has available for both fall semester breaks.
“We try to give them products that will sustain them through winter and their academic break,” she said. “We like to send them home with as much as possible.”
The Pioneer Pantry is normally open Wednesdays and Thursdays, so the college is distributing the boxes on Nov. 16 and 17 because it will be closed Thanksgiving week.
Moretti said the staff will pack the boxes Monday and she hopes the pantry receives a turkey donation. If not, she said the college may instead pack the boxes with a gift card that can be used to buy a turkey.
Moretti also said people can donate to the foundation at bc3.edu/about/support, or they can visit the pantry in the lower level of the Student Success Center to make a donation.
“If we have anything left over from Thanksgiving, that will go into our stockpile for Christmas (break),” she said. “It is well used every year.”
