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By DONNAMY STEELE | Special to the Reporter

ALABASTER – Carmeuse Longview teamed up with Manna Ministries in late November to hold a food drive for local families during the holiday season.

Dawn Haden explained that the turnout was even greater than previous years, providing hundreds of families with food for the upcoming holidays.

“Our food drive was to support Manna Ministries, and we collected more than 300 items,” Haden said. “Overall, it was very successful. The food drive ran for about two weeks, from Nov. 9 to Nov. 20. When we dropped off the donations, their program director said that they average 300 families per week, so there are definitely a lot of families in need out there.”

Haden was proud to see how successful the food drive was and how dedicated the employees were to the cause.

“My heart is very warm at how giving our employees are,” Haden said. “We collected more than 300 food items, from breakfast items to canned foods and all kinds of things. Everybody stepped up collectively to collect this food for families in our community.”

Carmeuse is working on another holiday project that wraps up this week, Haden said. They started a “Stocking Tree” project to sponsor gifts for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Birmingham.

“We are about to wrap up a stocking tree event to support local families this Christmas. Our plant is sponsoring 25 children through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Birmingham. It is similar to an angel tree, but we call it a stocking tree,” Haden said. “Each tree has a stocking with a wish list so employees can take it home and support the children. We wish we had more because all of the kids were spoken for, but we had an overwhelming response from our employees. It was a great and excellent turnout.”

Overall, their site is planning to sponsor 25 children in the program, Haden said.

To stay up to date with Carmeuse Longview and their projects, visit their Facebook page.