By Ken Mammarella
For more than 20 years, West End Neighborhood House has hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for people it has helped through Life Lines, its program for current and former foster care youth, homeless youth, and those who identify as LGBTQ+.
The dinner is more than a meal.
“I feel a sense of community with both the managers as well as the residents within the program,” says LeVon Jackson, who attended his first West End Thanksgiving dinner in 2019 and has been a regular since. “It’s a great way to end up learning about people who I live near.”
“We have young people who never had a home, who might have been in 17 placements,” says Paul Calistro, the Wilmington nonprofit’s executive director. “They think of this as coming home and bring their children. They feel safe and comfortable. It’s a tradition.”
The organization, founded in 1883, has multiple programs that build communities in multiple ways. For example, “we still start community gardens to get people together, not just to feed them,” he says.
And about every month it celebrates communities.
A college reveal celebrates success. It’s a dinner where young people who have been helped through West End talk about where they’ve been accepted to college. “All the younger kids watching it get excited about education,” Calistro says.
Cornerstone West Community Development Corp., a sister agency, hosts events like block parties that celebrate place.
And “Twice a year, we celebrate the graduation of students that have started their own businesses through our Launcher program,” he says. That’s about 250 people annually.
West End actually hosts two Thanksgiving dinners, one for Life Lines customers (that’s what Calistro likes to call the people that his agency helps, because they deserve good customer service) and another for customers of its Education & Employment program.
Several programs celebrate the holidays by uniting multiple communities.
In 2024, 500 households (1,800 people) received full Thanksgiving baskets. Distribution involves Hilltop Lutheran Community Center, Rosehill Community Center, Rodney Street Tennis, Good Shepherd Baptist Church, Catholic Charities, Cornerstone West, Life Lines and Seeds of Jesus. Supporters include the Food Bank of Delaware, Wegmans, ShopRite/Kenny Family Foundation, T-Mobile, Winner Automotive, Caesar Rodney Rotary Club and new this year Dot Foods Charitable.
Seventy to 80 volunteers help on distribution day. Many are regulars, but there’s always space for newcomers, development director Greg Munson says. Some regulars have turned this charitable event into a family tradition by involving their children and grandchildren.
West End runs two Adopt-a-Family programs, connecting community and corporate supporters with families to ensure that 500 children “experience the joy of the season,” according to Munson. Top supporters include the Power for Good Foundation, Capital One, Chase, CSC Station and Barclays.
Local individuals and businesses also support the Thanksgiving baskets and Adopt-a-Family.
A youth workforce development program called Bright Spot Urban Farm celebrates the season by selling a few thousand poinsettias each year, in addition to training 22 people in horticulture, greenhouse operations, customer service and business management.
Some people who once received Thanksgiving baskets and Adopt-a-Family gifts pay it forward by volunteering with these programs, Calistro said.
People who have been helped in other ways feel a similar call to help. Recently, a middle-aged woman showed up West End and identified herself as its second foster care child.
“She said, ‘I came here to see what my old home looked like and to be inspired,’” Calistro recalls. “‘I’m going to build one in Baltimore, because this place changed and saved my life.’”
— For more on the organization’s program, visit WestEndNH.org
Above: Volunteers wrap gifts for West End Neighborhood House’s Life Lines program. Photo provided.
A Delaware native, Ken Mammarella was 18 when he was first paid as a freelance writer, and since then he’s written extensively about the interesting people, places and issues of Delaware and nearby areas. He also teaches at Wilmington University. For fun, he enjoys watching theater and creating it, playing board games and solving crosswords in ink.