Employees at Dominion Energy Ohio gathered their resources to provide meals for more than 1,000 Ohioans this Thanksgiving. 

The DEO African American Resource Group teamed up with the Ohio Diversity Council to provide 26 Thanksgiving meals to families in need in Akron, Louisville, Ravenna, Barberton, Maple Heights, Twinsburg, Cuyahoga Falls and Lima. AARG Chair Tamara Davis came up with the idea at a meeting with CEO Bob Blue and Jim Eck, Vice President and General Manager for Ohio and West Virginia.  

Over the course of the month, the ERG teams collected turkeys, whole chickens, trays of macaroni and cheese, stuffing, green beans, yams, cornbread, cranberry sauce, cake and juice for all 26 families. The group met to assemble all the pieces and parts and readied the baskets for delivery throughout our service area beginning on November 19. The project was funded from leftover ERG resources due to limitations on programming from COVID-19.

Early training as a chef could not prepare Charles Roach, Senior Business Process Analyst in Akron, for what has become his annual Thanksgiving throwdown. Six years ago, Charlie was recruited to help make Thanksgiving meals for people in need in Southern Cuyahoga County. “In 24-hours you can impact thousands of people – you don’t need $1 million dollars – all I’m doing is cooking turkey, stuffing and all the fixings,” said Charlie. 

He uses his Dominion Energy employee volunteer day to help prepare what has now grown into 1,300 Thanksgiving meals. Charlie is the team lead of 12 volunteers who made up the cooking crew at his church. Together they donned masks and followed COVID-19 safety guidelines to prepare and package this year’s takeout meals. In years past, more than 2,000 meals were prepared and split between sit-down dinners and carryout, but the pandemic limited the team’s reach this year. 

In all, Charlie helped cook 120 turkeys, 21 sheet trays of sweet potatoes, 25 trays of mashed potatoes, 28 trays of stuffing, 25 trays of green beans, 40 gallons of gravy, and baked hundreds of pies. Any family or individual who needed a meal for Thanksgiving got one, and a group of volunteer drivers delivered the meals to 1,100 members of the community who could not pick them up from the local school where they were prepared. Charlie welcomes anyone who is interested in volunteering with him!