Today thousand of southsiders converged on the San Antonio ISD Complex on the grounds of Burbank High School as State Farm held their Third Annual Good Neighbor Turkey Give-Away. The event got so much response that SAISD police officers had to assist with the long lines of traffic making people park as far as three blocks away.
Evangelina Gonzales was one of the thousands that were pleased to get a turkey explaining that she had just adopted two grandchildren and getting this turkey would help the family with her thanksgiving celebration.
The event was well coordinated with the lines moving smoothly with the help of countless volunteers also assisting. Tech Sergeant Trent was among other Air Force personnel volunteering to assist in the event. She like the others represented the 433rd Airlift Wing from Lackland AFB.
The event coordinator from State Farm was Robert Centeno with Sara Brouilland helping out as the event manager.
“Well obviously what we can give back to the community gives us personal satisfaction. When you see people who are out here who are in need and we are able to bring families together by giving them a thanksgiving dinner well that just speaks volumes way beyond anything,” stated Centeno.
“This is our third annual event and it has grown exponentially. Our first year it was 1,000 birds and our second year we double that, actually we gave away 1,700 birds. And this year we decided to do something bigger because we understand its been tough times for our community and so we wanted to give back and so we decided to give away 5,000.”He added.
“ This event is sponsored by sixteen local State Farm agencies with our offices in Austin. We have donated all the turkeys for this event. We purchased 5,000 turkeys. And our objective here was to connect with the community and give back during these tough economic times.” He added.
Centeno commented about the large response by the community and stated that they had Univision assisting them with radio spots and also had some newspaper distributions. He also acknowledged that working with SAISD gave them plenty of grassroots to the area.
Centeno concluded “Burbank and SAISD was a perfect partnership in that they had the an outstanding location and their outreach to this community was what they were looking for.
