Streator Thanksgiving Effort Will Feed Record 60 Families
Seven years after a Facebook post filled 23 baskets, volunteers will pack this year's 60 on Saturday in Ancona.
STREATOR — Volunteers with Streator Community Thanksgiving Basket will pack 60 holiday meal baskets Saturday, the most in the group's seven years.
Founder Shea Gilkerson said the group met this year's donation goal ahead of its usual deadline around Halloween.
Including this year's baskets, the effort will have provided 290 Thanksgiving baskets since 2020, Gilkerson said.
How it started
Gilkerson started as a lunch and recess supervisor at Woodland School and later earned her paraprofessional certification. She said that work showed her how many families in the area were going without.
When COVID-19 closed schools, she worried about families who relied on school meals. She watched local schools deliver sack lunches to bus stops.
"I truly think they're heroic for that," she said.
Thanksgiving had always been her favorite holiday, one of the few times her large extended family could count on being together. In 2020, she posted on Facebook asking whether anyone would help put together baskets for families in need.
Neighbors filled 23 baskets that first year.
"I shouldn't feel surprised by how many jumped on and helped us make 23 baskets that first year, but it does every time I think about how much of a leap of faith people took on me and my idea," Gilkerson said.
The group packed 51 baskets last year.
How it works
Each basket holds a $25 gift card toward the cost of a turkey, along with stuffing, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, side-dish ingredients, dessert mixes and two foil pans.
Local businesses cover the gift cards. For the last several years, that money has come from Scoot's Auto, NAPA Auto Parts, Streator Collision, Hayden Construction and Donald Daly, Gilkerson said. Volunteer Kelly Hansen recruited those donors.
The Quartermania quarter auction, run by Lori Mahan and Marla Merritt, is supporting the effort for the second year.
Each season, Gilkerson sets the number of baskets and posts a list of the items needed in the group and on her personal Facebook page. Over about two months, she collects donations, buys what is still missing and posts updates until every item is covered.
Assembly takes about two hours, with volunteers moving down an assembly line to fill the baskets. This year's assembly is set for about 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, at Ancona Church of Christ in Ancona.
Nicole Murphy, Jessica Adams and Gilkerson's mother, Lu Schultz, have helped since the first year, Gilkerson said.
The baskets are distributed through Head Start and five area schools, Kimes, Centennial, Northlawn, Streator High School and Woodland. Counselors decide which families receive them.
Some families pick baskets up at school and some have them delivered. Gilkerson delivers the remaining community baskets herself.
She said she doesn't know who most of the recipients are, because the schools handle that, and she can't say whether some families have received baskets more than once.
"My goal for these baskets is to feed our food-insecure families, and if that happens to be the same family more than once, that's OK with me," she said. "I just want people to eat."
Gilkerson said she has received cards and messages over the years from some families she knows received baskets. One family that got a basket donated a flat of canned vegetables the next year, enough for three to six baskets.
Another told her they were able to buy their child a birthday gift because they didn't have to spend what money they had on Thanksgiving food.
After Thanksgiving
The basket effort has no remaining needs this year, Gilkerson said. The group plans to keep going past the holiday.
Planned projects include "meal-in-a-bag" Christmas meals for local micro pantries, a cereal and shelf-stable milk drive to help families over Christmas break, and filled Easter eggs for the micro pantries in the spring.
The group accepts food and monetary donations and asks that food donations be shelf-stable. Donations are coordinated through the Streator Community Thanksgiving Basket group on Facebook.
Why she does it
Gilkerson said her own household is low-income, though she has never had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
"As a low-income household myself, the stress of always fighting to stay afloat is exhausting and feels dehumanizing," she said.
She said the point of the baskets is for families to feel seen without being judged for needing help.
"It's recognition that you deserve a good hot meal, and hopefully a break from the constant stress of wondering how you're going to make ends meet," she said. "Life is hard enough, we have to stick together."
