The Mozel Sanders Foundation is a non-profit organization that feeds the hungry and has been doing so for over 40 years. Last year the foundation served more than 40,000 hot meals on Thanksgiving Day. The organization uses Butler University’s campus while the students there are on break, and volunteers will prepare meals for less fortunate families.

Volunteers will also do home delivery orders to the people who aren’t able to leave their homes.

“We encourage (students) to go help somewhere on Thanksgiving because they can turn those hours in, they just don’t go toward their required hours. And we’ve got several students who go above and beyond,” Fox said. She also added that she thinks about 4 percent of students do go above and beyond.

They don’t just stop at the required hours. “A lot of the food pantries, if they are in community centers, they do some type of meal, and the students that are already volunteering there, a lot will volunteer at those dinners,” she said. Those dinners are typically not on Thanksgiving Day; they usually take place the day before.

Fox said that a lot of pantries conduct programs the Saturday before Thanksgiving when they hand out Thanksgiving groceries. Sometimes they will include coupons to Kroger for turkey and other goods for a Thanksgiving dinner. “In our Senior Habitat we would drop off Thanksgiving baskets rather than Christmas baskets at our past habitat families’ homes,” Fox said, which is all the families that past students have built for.

These service opportunities are offered every year. “We’ve got kids that volunteer at some of the family shelters. Family shelters will have Thanksgiving dinner, and they do have some of their volunteers come in to help serve those dinners,” she said. The biggest pantry that she knows of that serves food is Mozel Sanders.

Fox said part of the reason behind their structure of the service program is founded on the Holy Cross brothers. She said, “That vision still continues today. Even though we might be a wealthy high school we still have a vision for serving the poor. That’s why our program is structured for students to go out and serve the poor and less fortunate than we are.”