Culinary arts students at Lorain County JVS in Oberlin spent about a week this month preparing 550 Thanksgiving meals bound for veterans, homeless shelters, and first responders stretching from Lorain to Akron, Canton and Youngstown. The students used 649 pounds of turkey to pull off the effort, which marks the second year the school has partnered with Veteran Housing Solutions on the holiday meal drive.
Veteran Housing Solutions organized and funded the meal effort, according to WKYC, which reported on the students' work. The nonprofit describes itself as a 501(c)(3) dedicated to assisting veterans and their families with housing and support solutions, according to the group's own archive page. Organizers allocated 500 of the meals to individual locations, while the remaining 50 went to VFW Post 9871 — the first time that post has received meals through this particular drive.
Annette Tibbs, co-chair of the Veteran Housing Solutions/Ride for Valor team, became involved with the group a couple of years ago and said police and fire departments that support the area receive meals too, not just veterans. VFW Post 9871 has a history of providing Thanksgiving dinners to veterans without family, but those dinners nearly stopped after the woman who organized them died last year. Tibbs asked the post to resume the tradition this year.
From a Local Restaurant to a Classroom Kitchen
Veteran Housing Solutions previously relied on a local restaurant to prepare the meals, but that restaurant stopped because of family obligations, prompting Tibbs to begin contacting vocational schools for help. That search led to Lorain County JVS, where culinary arts instructor Jordan Krystowski — who graduated from the same program she now leads and returned to the school after her previous instructor retired — took on the project with her students.
Krystowski said her students were excited to prepare and give the meals away. Eighteen-year-old senior Thomas Simons said helping veterans made him feel grateful, while fellow senior Aviana Taylor, also 18, said helping people who need food made the large job worthwhile. The students didn't just cook this week — Lorain County JVS students also served veterans in person earlier in the week ahead of Veterans Day.
Project Life Students Pitch In On Delivery Day
Culinary arts students cooked and packaged the meals, but they weren't alone in the effort. Students from Project Life, a program for students with disabilities, carried meal boxes out to volunteers for delivery. Project Life instructor Katie Berardi's program aims to show that students with disabilities are capable and can pursue employment or independent living, with a stated goal of moving students toward Project Search placements or independent employment.
Volunteers are set to deliver the finished meals to homeless shelters and transitional housing programs for veterans, distributing them across a wide swath of Northeast Ohio from Lorain to Akron, Canton and Youngstown, with meals also going to Oberlin and Wellington. Some of the meals are earmarked for local police and fire departments. Veteran Housing Solutions and Lorain County JVS have already agreed to a third year of partnership, building on what organizers describe as the second consecutive year the two sides have worked together.
A Broader Push to Feed Stark County Veterans
The Oberlin students' effort echoes a wider pattern of food donations supporting veterans elsewhere in Northeast Ohio. Veteran Housing Solutions' own archive credits volunteers with preparing Thanksgiving meal deliveries to veterans in Northeast Ohio, listing Valor Home among the destinations. A meal-related thank-you in the archive is attributed to the Chief of Police and Director of Security at RTA Greater Cleveland.
Honor Home, run by Axess Family Services, describes its transitional housing as offering support, clothing and food alongside case management for veterans working toward permanent housing, and the program says it is open to homeless women veterans and their children as well as single male veterans, according to Axess Family Services. Separately, a Stark County Sheriff's Office food drive delivered just under 2,000 pounds of food to Honor Home, which News 5 Cleveland reported was the largest haul since the twice-yearly Veterans Food Drive began in 2022. That drive ran from Nov. 1 through Nov. 30 and collected non-perishable items at four county locations, the station noted, and another round was being planned for the spring. A later community drive, promoted by the Stark County Sheriff's Office, the Louisville Police Department and the Veterans Service Commission of Stark County, invited the public to donate during May to benefit veterans at Honor Home in Canton, according to the Canton Repository.
Back in Oberlin, Veteran Housing Solutions is still looking for volunteers to help with its ongoing work. The group raises money through events including a hoedown, and it has a golf outing coming up in February. Tibbs has invited anyone interested to come volunteer with the organization.
