On Friday, the TLC Community Center finished out another successful year of its Summer Food Program by serving the last meal of the summer to children across Carter County and at a satellite location in Bristol.
At the conclusion of the nine-week program, Center volunteers had prepared and served 74,925 meals to children in Carter County and 7,475 meals at the Bristol location.
“It started 14 years ago with 75 children and it has grown to 425 kids per day in Carter County and 110 kids per day in Bristol,” said Angie Odom, founder and director of the TLC Community Center.
Odom started the Summer Food Program after working with children in the Carter County School system and learning that many of their families struggled to provide food for them during the summer.
“Over 65 percent of Carter County School’s children are on free or reduced lunch,” Odom said. “During the school year many of these children receive the bulk of their needed nutrition from the school menu.”
In an effort to fight hunger in the community, Odom launched the Summer Food Program to help provide meals for children during the summer months when they are out of school and don’t have access to those meals.
Each day of the program, children are given a hot dinner meal for that day and a bagged breakfast and lunch for the following day. At each stop along each route, volunteers take the time to witness to the children and pray with them.
The program is supported by local churches, businesses and community groups as well as a host of volunteers. This year, more than 1,000 people volunteered with the program at one point or another during the nine weeks it was operating.
“So many local churches and groups have helped,” Odom said. “I’m afraid to try to name them all because I’m afraid I’ll forget someone.”
Many of the volunteers come from local churches and youth groups, but many also come from out of the local area. Children attending the summer camp programs at Doe River Gorge came each week to help as did groups of volunteers from North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
In addition to preparing and serving food, volunteers also helped support the program by working in the TLC Community Center’s garden. Produce harvested from the garden — such as corn, tomatoes and cucumbers — were used to help prepare meals for the children and were included in the family food boxes handed out.
“The volunteers have been so amazing,” Odom said. “I have met the most awesome individuals.”
While fighting hunger in the community is the primary focus of the program, Odom said the program also helps in other ways.
“When you get to know them and see them every day, you really see where else you can help,” she said. Over the course of the program, Odom said the Center and volunteers also helped meet other needs they encountered such as buying clothes or shoes for families in need, providing them with diapers and baby formula and, in one case, helping to provide care for a family’s pets.
And while the program is designed to pass along God’s blessings to others, Odom said sometimes during the course of the program she encounters someone who blesses her. This year, that blessing came in the form of one very special volunteer, a teenage boy who came to help serve others.
Odom said this young man has some very serious disabilities but that did not stop him for a minute as he worked hard to help out as many people in as many ways as he could.
The young man’s story is a touching one, said Odom, who was near the point of tears as she spoke about him.
“He was not born disabled,” she said. “It was through abuse that he has these disabilities.” The abuse came at the hands of his family, Odom said, adding this young man and his brother — who was also disabled by abuse — were eventually removed from their home and adopted by another family.
“He said that God blessed him so much with his adoptive family and that he forgives his birth parents for their actions,” Odom said. “Here he is, in the heat in his condition helping people each day. He had every excuse in the world to be angry and not want to help anyone, but there he was feeding children he didn’t even know.”
For more information on the TLC Community Center, its programs, or ways you can become involved, contact Angie Odom at 423-895-8601.