It’s almost Thanksgiving and Disney World Cast Members are giving back.

Hollywood Studios

For almost 25 years, Cast Members have supported the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida by providing Thanksgiving meals to hundreds of residents, and we were invited to see their process and learn more about giving back to the community!

We visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios to speak with Executive Chef Bill Brown about providing Thanksgiving meals to the homeless community of Orlando, Florida. He said, “Our community really is in need and especially at the time of the holidays it’s important that we give back.”

Chef Bill

Chef Bill took us backstage at Hollywood & Vine, where his culinary team was prepping turkey. He explained that the team provides full traditional Thanksgiving meals to the Coalition, including freshly made stuffing, housemade whipped potatoes, cranberry sauce made from scratch, giblet gravy, traditional green beans, pumpkin pies, and pecan pies. As Chef Bill put it, “All of our team has helped pull together.”

Chef Bill and his Culinary Team

Dishes are prepped and placed in aluminum containers for easy transportation to the Coalition.

Prepping turkey!

On Thursday evening, Cast Member volunteers (whom Disney calls VoluntEARS) will serve these home-cooked Thanksgiving meals to residents at the Coalition. Disney World Director of External Affairs, Tajiana Ancora-Brown, explained that this was one of the first volunteer events she was able to attend as a new Cast Member. She said, “The opportunity to be there in person and see firsthand what that meant to the residents right here in Central Florida will always stay with me.”

Disney World Director of External Affairs, Tajiana Ancora-Brown

Allison Krall, CEO of Colation for the Homeless of Central Florida, explained that they are “the largest homeless services provider [and the] largest shelter in Central Florida,” and “our goal is to get people out of shelter and into housing as quickly as possible.” The Coalition helped over 1,900 people find housing last fiscal year.

Allison Krall, CEO of Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida

You can support the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida by donating or volunteering yourself! Click here to learn more.

©Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida

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Click here to support the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida!

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Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disney World to attend a media event to learn more about how Disney’s Hollywood Studios supports the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ