by “The Gravy Master” William Fang

Back in elementary school, we learned that Thanksgiving was a day to commemorate the symbolic feast between the natives Indians and the pilgrims. Nowadays, it is a fine tradition and a wonderful holiday in the United States. As we grew up, the meaning of Thanksgiving has expanded. There were often times we asked ourselves: How could we express our thanks? Is it enough to merely eat turkey and spend time with family? Isn’t there a way to make Thanksgiving more meaningful?Slowly, I realized that the most important aspect of giving thanks is the people who receive our thanks. “Being grateful” is fine, but unless there is someone to receive that gratitude, it is meaningless.

Last summer, A few kids in San Ramon Valley Asian community established a youth group and named it“Promoting Leadership in Aspiring Youth (PLAY)”. The mission of PLAY was to create opportunities for middle to high school students to build community awarenessand leadership skills. Since it’s creation, PLAY has been attracting several dozens of studentsto the team. This year, PLAY joined the Livermore Community Thanksgiving Dinneron Thanksgiving Day to serve hot meals to local people in need.

      Livermore Community Thanksgiving Dinner is an organization that has been around for more than 30 years. Every year, the organization hostsan eventthatprovides free hot meals to local seniors, singles, shut-ins, families and veterans from the VA Hospital. There are over 1000 meals served each holiday season. By doing so, the organization is promoting thesimple value of Thanksgiving: Giving and sharing with people around in the community.

For many of us, this year was the first year of volunteering on Thanksgiving Day. Dozens of PLAY youth members with some of their parents gathered at the Bothwell Arts Center At 12:00 PM, all wearing white shirts with PLAY logos on. All the shifts were pre-signed. As soon as everyone arrived, we started the work: Katie serving green beans, Grace washing dishes, Edward serving mashed potatoes, Larry serving sweet potatoes, David recording the number of meals packed, Andy and Albert preparing deserts, Wesley, Andrew, Zoe, Brandon, Max, Emily, Kelly, Richard, Eric and many other PLAY members worked diligently on their assigned jobs. My job was to serve gravy. The job was tedious and repetitive. But the compliments from other volunteers motivated me to keep going.In five hours, we boxed more than 350+ take-home/take-out meals and served many people. This year’s Thanksgiving Day was different for many PLAY members and families. We are thankful for all the effort the group put in as a whole. In the end it all came down to teamwork and showing the gratuity for it. We are proud to share our core value to the local community.       

Community service is not a race of “hours”, but a feeling and a life lesson. This feeling is earned through hands-on experience. Maybe community service is the satisfaction of helping those who may otherwise receive less help and seeing their smiles of appreciation and gratitude. Or perhaps byknowing that we have the awareness to others, which is only gained through the community service, could we understand what we could do to make our community richer and better. More importantly, helping the community will transform us into more open-minded and compassionate people with a bigger heart.