Volunteers pack dinners in a box for families in need

Local teenagers and adults yesterday began helping bring Thanksgiving to more than 700 underprivileged families in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

This is the eighth year that volunteers with the Mentor Cares program, an outgrowth of Leadership Cares Foundation, have organized, assembled and packed ingredients for Thanksgiving dinners into cardboard boxes that the families will pick up.

The preparation of the boxes was as part of the foundation's annual Thanksgiving Cares initiative. Last year, the group assembled about 5,600 meals.

"We're having a good time," said Bianca Viza, 20, a Montgomery College sociology student who was one of the many volunteers who helped pack the boxes.

"This really is a labor of love," said Joanne Johnson, 46, of Alexandria, an employee of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "I want to give something back to the community."

The collections are being assembled at a distribution center at the DoubleTree Hotel in Rockville. Hotel managers learned of the group's Thanksgiving initiative and donated the large carpeted meeting center for two days.

The program is developed by the Leadership Cares Foundation, an organization that teaches leadership skills to teenagers and young adults.

In early years of the program, the volunteers delivered the boxes to the families. But tonight, the volunteers will take the boxes to about a dozen Montgomery County schools and Northwestern High School in Prince George's County, where families will pick up the packages.

Several charities also will deliver packages to some families.

"With over 700 families, it was impossible to go to all the homes," said Ron Yudd, founder of Leadership Cares who collected Thanksgiving food and delivered it to 16 families in 1997.

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