Over 1,000 families picked up a large bag of food at a drive-thru event in the WGTS parking lot this past Saturday. This Hands and Heart project will help put a little something extra in their home pantries, just in time for Thanksgiving. After learning about the food drives WGTS did during the government shutdown, the humanitarian, faith-based organization Convoy of Hope reached out to the station to see if they could bring a semi-truck full of food to the station for distribution in the Washington, D.C., community.

“We’ve never done anything of this scale,” said WGTS morning show host Jerry Woods. “But we figured if God was going to put this in our lap, then we needed to do our best to bless our community. The volunteers are the ones who made it happen.”

Students from Mt. Aetna Adventist School, Highland View Academy, and several troops from the American Heritage Girls showed up this past Wednesday and unloaded 26 pallets into individual grocery bags. Those bags were put into carts, rolled into the station’s first floor, and stacked four feet high. On Saturday, the team gathered again with volunteers to welcome hundreds of cars into the WGTS parking lot. Listeners were greeted by staffers and directed into lines where volunteers loaded bags of food directly into cars.

“It was a fantastic day,” said WGTS director of promotions and community engagement Ken Scribner. “We were able to provide edible joy for hundreds of people who all left with smiles on their faces.”

The excess food from the food drive was delivered to Salvation Army food pantries and other food bank ministries in the area.