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Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless Thanksgiving Day Dinner

Aired November 22, 2001 - 09:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now to a Thanksgiving tradition right here in Atlanta. It's called the Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless Thanksgiving Dinner, but the event started by the late civil rights leader Hosea Williams offers much more than food.

CNN's Natalie Pawelski is standing by live at Atlanta's Turner Field, which is affectionately known as "The Ted" here, and she's got the latest for us and the set up there -- Natalie.

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, that's right, they will be serving about 20,000 meals here today, but it's about a lot more than just feeding people. This event was started 30 years ago by Hosea Williams, the civil rights leader who died last year, and his tradition continues on. They will be feeding people here, they will be getting -- giving them showers, if they like, there's clothing that they can have. You can see they have rooms set up for counseling. There will be worship services available. And in addition, they'll be able to get medical and dental services as needed.

Now all of this runs on an awful lot of volunteer power, as you can imagine. And joining us here today are a trio of volunteers, a couple of cousins and their aunt. We've got, first of all, Steve who's 12.

What are you doing here today, Steve?

STEVE, AGE 12: I just wanted to give back to my community.

PAWELSKI: You wanted to give back to your community. Do you know how you'll be doing that today?

STEVE: By serving the food, helping with the food services.

PAWELSKI: Are you a pretty good waiter?

STEVE: Kind of.

PAWELSKI: How about you, Cousin Stephanie (ph), what are you doing here today?

STEPHANIE: Since the tragedies that have been going on in our community, I wanted to give back.

PAWELSKI: And you didn't mind getting up this early on what isn't even a school day?

STEPHANIE: No, I'm used to it.

PAWELSKI: And bringing both Steve and Stephanie down today was their Aunt Lisa Whittington.

Lisa, with the events of this year, has that kind of changed what you're doing in terms of volunteerism?

LISA WHITTINGTON, VOLUNTEER: Absolutely. I'm from New York, so it hit home for me pretty hard. And since then I've pledged myself to be more of a giver than a taker. And it makes life more meaningful when we give, so I've been pushing myself to give more than I'm taking.

PAWELSKI: Well, thank you so much for coming down today, and thank you for joining us.

They're expecting to start feeding people at about 11:00. Like I said, between 20,000-25,000 guests expected to show up by then.

And, Leon, in answer to your question of the last half hour, they're telling me it takes 2,200 turkeys to feed all these people.

HARRIS: That's because my brothers aren't there. They'd need more than that if they showed up.

All right, thanks, Natalie, good to see you. We'll see you in just a bit.

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