The 9th Annual Turkey Bowl — a community-wide week of sports, games, and service — has arrived in the South End once more for 2023. This South End tradition is steeped in a history of getting the community involved in brag-worthy football games and dinners, and benefiting the community through acts of service. This annual event is led year after year by community builder and youth developer Cortez Charles and his organization, the Fatherhood Accountability Movement, aka F.A.M., which allows the work of this one-week event to last year-round by giving young people a place to continue to scratch that itch for service and to be embraced by the community they call home.
“I don’t ever want to be able to help, and not help.” Those words from Cortez Charles signify the foundation and the mission of the 8th Annual Turkey Bowl Week.
This week is the seventh annual Turkey Bowl Week of Service, and Cortez Charles is back with his team of youth volunteers to build on this prominent Rainier Beach tradition. The Turkey Bowl is an annual, youth-led flag-football game and service event. The football game was cancelled last year due to COVID-19 so the event pivoted toward three days of community service, and local youth helped package and distribute nearly 1,000 hygiene kits and turkey-sandwich lunches to community members in need.
“The original Turkey Bowl Week is back and in full effect,” Charles says about this year’s event, which will be held Nov. 21–25 between Rainier Beach Community Center and Rainier Beach High School. On Nov. 24, in addition to the annual youth flag-football game, there will be a community dinner hosted by food trucks.
This week marks the sixth annual Rainier Beach Turkey Bowl Week of Service, and even with new COVID-19 restrictions putting our state back under lockdown, Cortez Charles and his team of youth and community partners have found a way to make this event just as impactful as ever.
With four children, two jobs, oversight of three teen late night programs at just as many community centers, and a desire to be on his loving wife’s good side with perfect “date night” attendance, Cortez Charles knows it would’ve been impossible to pull off Rainier Beach’s fifth annual Turkey Bowl Week alone. Continue reading City Unity, Community Reliance at Heart of Turkey Bowl Week→
Cortez Charles has fond memories of playing football on Thanksgiving with his family. Four years ago he decided he wanted to revive the tradition. But instead of just playing football, Charles wanted to turn Thanksgiving and the days leading up to it into a chance for young people to give back to the community. For the fourth consecutive year, Turkey Bowl engaged youth in the community by preparing sandwiches for homeless people and providing families in need with food for the holiday.
For Cortez ‘Tez’ Charles, Thanksgiving once meant an early morning spent with family hurdling would-be tacklers, while his uncles seldom succeeded at summoning youthful dexterity. Everyone played with last night’s sleep still pasted around their eyelids.Continue reading Family Tradition Births South Seattle Turkey Bowl Tournament→
Amplifying the Authentic Narratives of South Seattle
