United Way Dollars Help Deliver Meals to People in Need

It’s more than just a meal at Horizons Meals on Wheels, a United Way partner agency. Meals On Wheels helps older adults and persons with disabilities meet their daily nutritional needs. Delivering hot, fresh restaurant-quality food 7 days a week. Staff and volunteers who make deliveries provide safety checks, as well as emotional and social support

 

United Way – Helping Deliver Smiles One Meal at A Time

Eugenia Vavra, United Way of East Central Iowa:
“We know that there are about 45,000 older adults that are 65 years and over in our service area. And about one in four are in need, whether they need transportation to get to a doctor’s appointment or maybe food so that they can stay in their home. United Way helps meet the food needs of older adults, and we also do home delivered meals for folks who might not be able to prepare their meals.”

Frances Scott:
“Meals on Wheels is really a life saver, I would say.”

Dianna Young:
“Meals on Wheels provides about a 1,100 meals a day to homebound older adults in Cedar Rapids, Marion and Hiawatha, for those that don’t have the resources to get out to pick up food or groceries or to be able to cook for themselves.”

Frances Scott:
“I couldn’t make a meal every day; let me put it that way. Some days I feel real good and some days I don’t. This is a necessity to help people get their nutritional meal.”

Dianna Young:
“There were two programs in Cedar Rapids; Witwer Senior Center delivered meals and so did Horizons. Many times we were delivering to the same buildings that Witwer was, so Horizons and Witwer Senior Center combined our programs to improve the efficiencies that we could get by having less staff doing more meals.

Mike Davis, Meals on Wheels cook:
“I’m the cook here, and today we made 597 meals. Today’s meal is smothered beef and the other option that we have is chicken cordon bleu. It comes with broccoli and potatoes and several side items.”

Dianna Young:
“The biggest problem is the funding issue. There is still a huge gap in the funding, and because there is such a big gap in funding there are a lot of needs. There are financial needs. There are the needs for more volunteers because we have 44 home delivered meal routes every day and we only have eight paid drivers. So that means that there are a lot of volunteers that help us every day get those meals delivered to our clients.”

Sue Dostal, Meals on Wheels volunteer:
“I’ve been a volunteer with Meals on Wheels for about 11 ½ years. The people that I meet on the route, I call them my new kids because I taught middle school for 17 years and taught school for 34, so my new kids run from the ages of about 60 to90 plus. They are full of stories and we share a lot of camaraderie. They kind of become family after a while. You get very attached to them.”

Dianna Young:
“For many of the clients that we serve, the only person that they see all day, all week, is us. To know when you go a person’s house, the meal doesn’t mean as much to them as the social contact that they get when they see your smiling face. It makes it all worthwhile.”

Sue Dostal:
“It’s not about food, really for me, I mean, I know they need the food but the real reason I do it is the people connection.”

Dianna Young:
“Besides delivering meals, they provide important safety checks, so the contributions by the volunteers are very important to the program.”

Frances Scott:
“The one thing that I do like about it too is that if they do come and don’t get in touch with me, they call my son. And then my son will call to see why I did not answer the door.”

Eugenia Vavra:
“Not only do we need donations to United Way to help support these programs, we also need your help in meeting some of the needs, especially in our rural communities. If you are able to provide transportation to an older adult to get to a medical appointment or maybe deliver one of those meals, that really does a lot of good for all of our community.”

 

Category: Health, Horizons, Older Adult Health, United Way of East Central Iowa, Video