WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Thanksgiving is a time of gathering and celebrating, but it’s also a time for giving back. This holiday season, college students in our state are tackling the challenge of feeding those in nearby communities.

The smell of stuffing and sweet potatoes filled the air inside the Campus Kitchen of Wake Forest University as they cooked more than 600 meals.

“For the menu this week, we’ll have turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and then vegetables as a side,” Raahim Khan, student coordinator of Campus Kitchen, said.

It was the 17th annual TurkeyPalooza event. Khan is a senior and student coordinator for Campus Kitchen and has been volunteering here since he was a sophomore in high school.

“I wanted to give back once I came to Wake. And then the motto of like, Pro Humanitate, Wake preaches that, and Campus Kitchen does that as well. I wanted to give back in that sense,” Khan said.

The meals they made will benefit the Winston-Salem community, being delivered to a dozen nonprofit organizations that help feed the people they serve.

“Winston, unfortunately, has like a very high like food insecurity rate. And these meals allow them to get meals that are actually nourishable,” Khan said.

And this isn’t just a yearly event for Campus Kitchen, it’s something they do all year round. They make dishes using leftovers from student organizations and even grocery stores.

“A lot of grocery stores, like, throw out stuff that’s still good. But there’s just like that sell by date. So instead, Campus Kitchen comes in, we pick up the food and then we’ll use that for like future meal prep. And then in a given week, we’ll do 100 to 200 meals normally,” Khan said.

Organizers received more than $3,000 for this year’s TurkeyPalooza fundraiser, which will help with more than just Thanksgiving meals.

“Over winter break for our community partners, when we’re not operating, we can give them canned goods and things like that and use some of that money so they can still be operating,” Khan said.

After making the meals, they go off to deliver them. Samaritan Ministries is just one of the community partners they work with, hoping to make a dent in hunger in Forsyth County.