Equinox hands over Thanksgiving tradition to Regional Food Bank

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- A Capital Region holiday tradition is changing, this Thanksgiving. Equinox is passing the torch of its annual Thanksgiving dinner to a new organization. NEWS10 is taking a closer look at what this means for the people in need of food, and the volunteers who work together to make it happen.

The Equinox Thanksgiving dinner started with 200 people served in a local church in 1969, growing each year until an army of volunteers prepared and delivered thousands of meals. “Equinox has been in this community, you know, for nearly 75 years. And with that said, you know, 54 years of that was the annual Thanksgiving community dinner, which actually was an extension of what Equinox did. It was never really part of its mission, but felt it was important,” said Chief Development Officer, Christina Rajotte.

As Equinox will now focus on fighting food insecurity year-round, the Regional Food Bank will be taking over the monumental Thanksgiving tradition. “We have gladly accepted the torch knowing that it's a big project that we are undertaking, but we are fully confident that we'll be able to provide necessary meals to our neighbors in need,” said Chief Program Director, Michael-Aaron Poindexter.

They showed NEWS10 Reporter James De La Fuente the warehouse where they have plenty of space to box up everything a family needs to make their own holiday meal.  They plan to have a drive through distribution the weekend before Thanksgiving. While there is no sit-down dinner, those in need of a hot meal will be taken care of as well. “In addition to the drive-thru food distribution, we're also doing prepared meals. And so, for that senior or that neighbor in need who cannot cook the meal or doesn't have the accessibility to cook the meal,” said Poindexter.

The Regional Food Bank says they have the supplies covered, what they need is the glue that held the dinner together for so many years, the people who gave of their time so others wouldn't be hungry. “The numbers that we do know is we'll need at least 1000 volunteers. So, if you're out there and you're looking for a volunteer effort, please come and volunteer with us,” said Poindexter.

Equinox already serves food daily in its domestic violence shelter and other programs. But working with more community partners, they are poised to serve many more people for far longer than one holiday meal. “We started this task force to look at that initiative, how to define it. And with that said, we could serve more than 20,000 individuals all year long through this new initiative. So, we shifted our, if you want to say, our resources and our time to that year-round because of the substantial impact it would have,” said Rajotte.