In these times, I am overwhelmingly grateful for YOU, our dedicated donors, volunteers, and staff. Our meal delivery services are essential and because of you, our doors remained open despite challenges presented due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Administrative staff worked remotely; kitchen workers prepared more meals despite increased safety restrictions; new volunteers enrolled almost daily and took the most stringent precautions to deliver critical meals to our most vulnerable neighbors.
I know that you and the community rely on us to continue providing meals to anyone of any age for any reason. Your support means that we have been able to meet the growing need to protect vulnerable populations by enabling them to stay at home. Thank you for being part of our community during this difficult time and thank you for your continued support to ensure Meals on Wheels will be here when we’re needed most. I want to share with you a visualization of the changes we have experienced over the past 12 weeks that you helped make possible.
All drivers had to line up and wait their turn to have their meals loaded
Caillin puts together “delivery packages”for each volunteer
We also delivered many extras to brighten our client’s day. Here we have beautiful tulips from Windflower Farms.
Jim Worthington gives a thumbs up for a mask donated by Mirehaven community by Del Web.
All staff members are required to wear a mask when working.
Our kitchen staff helped to prepare and package about 4,000 meals each week.
All meals delivered were frozen meals for 12 weeks.
Even though we are now back to a regular delivery schedule, many clients have chosen to stay on our frozen meal program.
It would take an entire week of preparation to make enough meals for our once-per-week frozen meal delivery.
After all meals were made and packaged, the office staff would load meals into volunteer’s vehicles for delivery.
We provide PPE to all our staff and volunteers to help ensure a safe and healthy delivery.
All volunteer drivers are required to wear masks and gloves as well as practice social distancing when delivering meals.
The office staff gears up to load cars in the heat of the day.
We were lucky to find hand sanitizer when other organizations were having trouble. These individual sizes worked out perfect for our delivery drivers.
We delivered so many meals in one week that we did not have enough coolers to accommodate them all. We had to split our delivery over two days.
Even though we were delivering frozen meals, didn’t mean we stopped providing fresh, local products. We delivered lettuce, salsa, and jams and more during our emergency meal schedule.
