Community Table got some combined help from Southlake’s Del Frisco’s Grille and the Lakes chapter of the Young Men’s Service League last week.
After YMSL canceled its year-end celebrations due to COVID-19, its local chapters were allowed to donate collected funds to a charity of their choice. Lakes chapter president Joan Shockley says their board of directors voted unanimously to support the food pantry at Community Table.
“Since the COVID-19 crisis changed all of our lives in late March, the Community Table has seen a huge increase in the number of patrons requesting assistance in the way of providing groceries for their families,” Joan says. “These families, unfortunately, have no other way of putting food on the table during these trying times. In fact, the requests for help have nearly doubled since the pandemic hit.”
Joan says when she asked the Community Table what their greatest needs were, she was surprised to find out they needed shopping carts for their older and physically challenged members. Not settling for the minimum, Joan reached out to Del Frisco’s Grille through a mutual contact and collected pounds of rice, peanut butter, tuna and butter from the restaurant at wholesale price.
“There’s no way we’re going to deliver 10 empty shopping carts,” Joan expresses. “We were going to fill those with food, whether we collected donations or paid for it ourselves. It was a great collaboration with Del Frisco’s.”
YMSL and 10 of its mother-son duos ventured out last week to deliver the carts full of groceries to the food pantry. Joan says she was proud that some of the younger members got to help a community in need and hopes they appreciated the lessons they’ve learned from the experience.
“We have two missions: to serve others in our community, and teach our boys about giving back and the kind of leaders they want to be,” Joan expresses. “It only takes one example, one experience to have it really hit their hearts to where they kind of get it. That’s why we do these things — to set an example.”
To learn more about the YMSL Lakes chapter, go online at YMSLLakes.org.