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Share your bounty: Mt. Pleasant encouraged to make DIY Community Dinner
Mt. Pleasant Community Thanksgiving Dinner is canceled this year
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
MT. PLEASANT — For many years, those without Thanksgiving dinner plans have gathered in Mt. Pleasant for the annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner put together by a group of volunteers at the United Methodist Church. This year, however, plans did not come together, and instead of just throwing in the towel, volunteers are encouraging the Mt. Pleasant community to participate in a “DIY Community Dinner.”
According to volunteer May Swarm, the normal community dinner takes “a lot of people and it takes a wide range of people,” to put together, and this year, a variety of reasons kept those that usually organize the meal from putting it on.
“The Methodist Church is very generous with their facilities, and the Methodist people are very involved,” Swarm said. “But it is a lot of different people from different churches and just community members, too. It is truly a community event. So, we want to get it back and going.”
For those missing the meal this year, Swarm says they can look forward to it returning next year and keep an eye out for ways to get involved in making it possible.
In the meantime, First United Methodist Church and The Grange Public House and Brewery donated take-out containers for individuals and families to pick up from The Vintage Raven on Jefferson Street to make a Do-It-Yourself community meal. These containers can be picked up during regular business hours at The Vintage Raven this week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., excluding Thanksgiving Day.
Swarm says the idea is that after people have made their Thanksgiving dinners, they look around their neighborhood or think of people they may know that might be alone or wouldn’t be cooking and “load up some plates and just share their bounty.”
“This is just kind of a last-minute thing, and it's coming together, and people are getting excited about it, and that's just neat,” Swarm said. “We are just so blessed, we just need to share, and that’s what the community dinner did. It took a lot of people, a lot of donations, and it was really a wonderful event, and people are definitely missing it.”
Comments: AnnaMarie.Kruse@southeastiowaunion.com
