Thank you, volunteers, for a great 2025!
Speaking of Thanksgiving – DESK has a lot of thanks to give this year. We ran our Thanksgiving for All program on our own for the first time ever, and, because of the community behind us, it was a huge success! At the Turkey Drop, we collected nearly 3,000 pounds of turkey and thousands more pounds of fixins! What did we do with all that food?
Some of it went out at our Thanksgiving Pantry on Olive Street, where we served over 200 neighbors! Among many volunteers, Athletic Brewing helped unload a Thanksgiving delivery, Citizens Bank stopped by to help at the pantry, and we’re grateful for them.
The rest? That went out to our first ever hot Thanksgiving meal in our Drop-in and Resource Center and to delivery for recently housed neighbors in the New Haven area, with the meals prepared from donated food by Yale Hospitality. Words don’t do justice to how powerful this day was, but maybe this segment from WFSB will help.
As soon as Thanksgiving was over, preparing for the holiday season started! Local musician Jerry Alexander gave a concert to our DRC clients and had another concert as a fundraiser at Scarpellino’s Restaurant. The New Haven Garden Club brought holiday cheer by donating decorations for the DRC! It made for a special environment especially for our Holiday Gift Wrapping event, where over 100 DESK supporters and their families came to wrap gloves, hats, and scarves to distribute on Christmas Eve at the DRC and during the holiday season on the street.
We’ve put out a lot of requests on our social media accounts and in our emails for winter gear – because our clients have asked for winter gear over this chilly and snowy winter. A few groups came to our dinner service on the New Haven Green to hand out coats, including the Yale Postdoctoral Association, who makes this a yearly commitment.
So, how did your support impact our clients? On Thanksgiving, 600 people received meals – about 200 at the DRC and about 400 by delivery. We’re still counting how many wrapped holiday gifts we gave out, but we expect that to be well in the hundreds, too. The numbers don’t tell the full story, though: just hear this call that we received the day after Thanksgiving to know what it meant for one client –
“Hi, my name is —- —–. I just wanted to thank you so, so much for the Thanksgiving dinner. Man , you guys knocked it outta the park, ’cause I don’t have any family or anything … and, uh , well, thank you so much for delivering food to me. It means the world to me, it really does. Thank you so, so much. And all the workers and volunteers and everyone — give them a big kiss for me. OK. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you again.”
We got lots of winter gear, too. We’ve been giving out scarves, gloves, hats, tents, coats, and sleeping bags frantically every day, and there always seems to be just enough for everyone thanks to the generosity of our donors.
In review, there have been a lot of changes this year – just read this message again and see how many times I used the word “new” or “first!” Not all of the changes, truthfully, have been positive. In fact, leaders are actively undoing the progress made and choosing to ignore the best-practice approaches in harm reduction, public benefits, and public health that DESK relies on and emphasizes in our work.
There are some things that haven’t changed, either. Hunger, homelessness, and poverty can’t be solved in a year. They are issues grounded in decades and generations of underinvestment, inequity, and kicking the can down the road. But this year, the New Haven community proved they would recommit to justice, and equity, and solidarity. We called and our volunteers and supporters answered, time and time again. You answered, time and time again.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Hunger knows no season – so let’s start out the New Year with a resolution to make supporting our neighbors and building our community throughout 2026, even when SNAP isn’t in the headlines and we don’t feel the windchill on our backs, because the DRC is still full, there are still lines outside our pantry, and the community is in need all year long.
You have the power! Volunteer, donate, host a drive, and use that power to take care of our community. I’ll see you at DESK!
