CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 While many families across Corpus Christi are preparing holiday meals and spending time with loved ones, others in the community are facing a very different reality. This week, two local businesses stepped up to ensure no one goes hungry ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.<\/p>\n
Bell\u2019Aroma Caf\u00e9 and the Corpus Christi Sharks Football Club partnered Tuesday morning to prep, package, and hand out hot holiday meals to neighbors near the downtown area. The effort was led by Bell\u2019Aroma owner Monica Manigarulo, who said giving back to the community is a responsibility she takes seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re blessed enough to have a community that shows up for you, it\u2019s your responsibility,\u201d Manigarulo said.<\/p>\n
Manigarulo said the community has supported her caf\u00e9 since day one, and she felt it was time to give that support right back. Her team was joined by staff and volunteers from the Corpus Christi Sharks Football Club, who helped assemble and prepare 250 holiday meals \u2014 a turkey dinner complete with traditional sides.<\/p>\n
For the team, the effort was emotional.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of emotional, right, because we grow up with our families and here they are, they don\u2019t have anybody,\u201dsaid Marissa Trevino, Director of Operations for the Corpus Christi Football Club. \u201cSo I\u2019m just kind of wondering what emotion or what memory are we going to spark for them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trevino said the club wants residents to know they\u2019re committed to more than sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are about the community and we want the community to know that we\u2019re more than just a soccer team,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Once meals were packaged, volunteers delivered the plates to neighbors along Sam Rankin Street and Nueces Bay Boulevard. Within minutes, the meals were gone \u2014 a sign of the need in the area.<\/p>\n
Many neighbors expressed deep gratitude for the unexpected holiday blessing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAw man, this is lovely to see this,\u201d neighbor Phillip Schalone said. \u201cThis is what the world needs, you know, everybody to give back. That\u2019s what they\u2019re waiting for.\u201d<\/p>\n
As volunteers handed out the last of the meals, Manigarulo said moments like these reaffirm why community outreach matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope and I wish a lot of people in the community follows in doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Both Bell\u2019Aroma Caf\u00e9 and the Corpus Christi Sharks Football Club say they hope to continue partnering on future outreach efforts \u2014 not only during the holidays, but throughout the year.<\/p>\n
For the latest local news updates, click here<\/a>, or download the KRIS 6 News App.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 While many families across Corpus Christi are preparing holiday meals and spending time with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2342,33885,7516,155,157,156,6066,2344,49,9186,7519,27149,15169],"class_list":["post-65026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-alexis-scott","tag-bellaroma-cafe","tag-ccfc","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-corpus-christi-sharks","tag-downtown-corpus-christi","tag-food","tag-food-distribution","tag-football-club","tag-meal","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}