Fishing community helps Metropolitan Ministries feed 36,000 families this holiday season

Fishing For Hope holiday event

FOX 13's Jordan Bowen talked with organizers about the impact these donations are having on people ahead of the holidays.

TAMPA, Fla. - The fishing community is coming together to help families in need ahead of Thanksgiving.

For the last 25 years, Fishing for Hope has helped bring in food donations and volunteers to Metropolitan Ministries annual holiday tent. This year the needs are greater than ever.

"Many people that have never had to ask for help before are coming to us now who once gave. Maybe they were a donor at one time, and now they're actually needing our help," Metro Ministries VP of Marketing Justine Burke said.

Metropolitan Ministries' annual Fishing For Hope holiday food drive.

Every year, Metro Ministries provides families with all the food they might need to cook a traditional holiday meal around Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's an effort made possible thanks to people like fishing Captain Bill Miller.

"We can give back. There's some people that can't give back. They don't have anything to give, so to watch the joy on their face when they can come in and see what we're doing, and they walk out with a dignified Thanksgiving dinner means a lot," Fishing for Hope Founder Captain Bill Miller said.

For the last 25 years, Captain Miller and several other fellow fish captains have taken part in Fishing for Hope, which is a food drive he created to help bring in donations to Metro Ministries holiday tent from their own local community of fishermen.

"We reached out to all of our friends in the fishing world through radio, TV and print media, and we got a lot of people involved and a lot of people helping and a lot of people dropping off. And over the last 25 years been a great success," Captain Miller said.

Every year, Metro Ministries serves about 30,000 families, but this year, because of the hurricanes, they served an additional 6,000 families reaching full capacity.

"What the families who are helping tell us is, it's really more about that relational piece of it where we're all coming together, we're talking, we're having conversations. They feel a sense of relief. They feel that people care about them, and they literally tell us that we give them hope," Burke said.

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