Local businesses, organizations donate food to Burbank Temporary Aid Center for holidays
The pantry at the Burbank Temporary Aid Center is getting fuller by the day as local businesses and residents begin donating food to the nonprofit for the holiday season.
There are already multiple shopping carts, racks and bins in the pantry filled with different kinds of breads, cookies, cakes and other fixings that go along with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Several of the facility’s freezers already contained frozen turkeys donated by Warner Bros. last week.
Barbara Howell, chief executive of the organization, said she expects to see between 750 and 1,000 turkeys coming in and out of the freezers during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Howell added that there is still time for low-income families who are not registered with the center to do so to get a free Thanksgiving meal.
For more information, visit burbanktemporaryaidcenter.org or call (818) 848-2822.
“The community is amazingly generous, and we couldn’t do it without them,” Howell said.
On Tuesday, members from the Brad Korb Real Estate Group brought one of the firm’s moving vans loaded with more than 100 frozen turkeys that will be donated to low-income families through Thanksgiving.
Courtney Korb, who is in charge of business development for her family’s company, said the company has donated turkeys to the Burbank Temporary Aid Center for at least eight years.
Korb, who grew up in Burbank, added that it means a lot to her knowing that she and other businesses and organizations in Burbank can help one another, especially during the holidays.
“Sometimes people forget how lucky they are — to have a roof over their head and to go to a grocery store to buy whatever they want,” Korb said. “We have an opportunity to give someone else some normalcy where a family can have a traditional holiday meal.”
Though the Brad Korb Real Estate Group was at the pantry to drop off turkeys on Tuesday, Howell said other organizations and businesses, such as the Boys & Girls Club, Nickelodeon, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, Central Casting and the Burbank City Federal Credit Union are holding monthlong food drives that will benefit the aid center.
Howell said she remembers nearly 10 years ago during the recession when her organization barely had any food to give to clients. After reaching out and developing relationships with various businesses and residents in Burbank, Howell said she is amazed how willing those in the city are to help others in need.
“I have lived in a lot of places, but I have not seen a community with a sense of responsibility to its own people like I have witnessed in Burbank,” Howell said. “This is definitely one of those things where it takes a village, and we have a great village.”
anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
