Signups close for Thanksgiving meal kits as the foundation aims for up to 1,000 Eagle County families
Eagle Valley Community Foundation closed applications on Nov. 9 for its Community Market Thanksgiving meal kits. Each $40 kit helps a family prepare a holiday meal, with a choice of a traditional kit or a tamale making kit and a $20 grocery gift card in both.
The signup window closed on Monday. Eagle Valley Community Foundation ended applications on Nov. 9 for the Thanksgiving meal kit program run through its Community Market, the food program at the centre of the foundation's work on food insecurity in Eagle County. This year the foundation hopes to help between 800 and 1,000 families across the county bring a Thanksgiving meal home.
Each kit costs $40 to provide, and families choose the kit that fits their own table. The traditional Thanksgiving kit carries fresh produce and familiar holiday staples. The alternative is a tamale making kit, with the ingredients to prepare a meal rooted in a different tradition. Both kits include a $20 grocery gift card, so each family can add the items the box does not carry. The choice is the point of the design: the foundation describes the card as offering added flexibility for each family, rather than a single menu decided for everyone.
The foundation introduced this year's program on Nov. 4 with a picture of what a kit is meant to do: arrive at a family's door on a November afternoon, carrying the ingredients for a holiday meal to a household juggling work, caregiving and a tight budget, with the choice of menu left to the family receiving it rather than made for them.
What happens between now and Thanksgiving
With applications closed, the program moves to assembly. The foundation has invited volunteers to help prepare the kits on Monday, Nov. 23, three days before Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, Nov. 26. Donations remain the other open door. Black Hills Energy will match the first $5,000 in donations to the campaign dollar for dollar, so a $40 gift made while the match lasts becomes $80 and can help provide two kits.
Smaller acts feed the same shelves this month. The Athletic Club at the Westin is holding community classes with donations benefiting The Community Market: a Restorative Yoga and Sound Bath session on Thursday, Nov. 12 from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., and two Thanksgiving morning classes, a Turkey Burner at 9 a.m. and a Grateful Flow Yoga class at 10 a.m. Admission to each of the classes is a donated non-perishable food item bound for The Community Market.
The meal kit program is one piece of the foundation's year round food work, which it describes as addressing food insecurity alongside health and wellness resources and support for local nonprofits. For the families already signed up, the remaining facts are simple ones: kits are prepared on Nov. 23, and Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 26. For everyone else, the match window and the volunteer day are the two ways still open to be part of it.
