PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Every weekend all year long, volunteers with Potluck in the Park help feed hundreds outside the Portland Art Museum downtown. But once a year, they instead head inside for a festive Christmas day dinner.
Both inside and out, guests were able to get free clothing for the winter and, of course, a large turkey meal.
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“We don’t have anything. So if you’re coming off the street, you’re getting clean, you can’t work, places like this are mandatory for us,” said potluck participant Christopher Hales. “We have to come because they help us. We get clothes, we get food, we get referrals to other resources.”
This is Potluck in the Park’s 31st Christmas dinner, now being held at the Fred and Suzanne Fields Ballroom just to keep up with demand.
Christmas dinner coordinator David Utzinger says in the years since, they’ve gone from serving 500 people to almost 1,300. With a number that high, it takes a lot of food…