Council
Council for Older Adults www.growingolder.org
COMMUNICATOR Volume 23, Number 2
March/April 2015
SIGNED, WHEELED, DELIVERED Meals On Wheels and Its Volunteers are Celebrated During March Jeff Robinson, Editor Council Communicator Pop quiz: What does the lunch you had today have to do with a British soldier in World War II? Well, if your lunch was delivered as part of the Council for Older Adults’ Meals On Wheels program, you have the soldier - among others - to thank for it. The Council’s Meals On Wheels program is one of more than 5,000 Senior Nutrition Programs nationwide and in the U.S. territories, all part of the Meals On Wheels America. The programs provide more than one million meals daily to older adults who need them, through either home delivery or service at a congregate location, or both. Meals On Wheels began in 1940, when nurses used baby prams to deliver meals to British servicemen in World War II. The first Meals program in the United States opened in 1954 to serve homebound residents in Philadelphia, PA, and in 1972, Senior Nutrition Programs were included in the Older Americans Act, which provided federal funding for Meals On Wheels programs. Today, hundreds of thousands of seniors receive meals each day, prepared by thousands of professionals employed by the different programs across the country and delivered by approximately two million volunteers who serve as meal drivers. The Meals On Wheels program at the Council for Older Adults contributes to those figures. Toni Dodge, nutrition program manager at the Council, said Delaware County’s meal program started in the early 1990s and operated out of two sites - Asbury United Methodist Church and Grady Memorial Hospital. “They were two separate entities that had Meals On Wheels delivered throughout the county. Each had a different funding source,” Dodge said. By 2004, the Council had taken over both the Asbury and Grady programs. Dodge said about 10,000 meals were being prepared per month at that time, for 430 clients. “When the Council took over, the program was still run out of Grady because the former Council office on Bowtown Road didn’t have the space,” she said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 22...
We provide choices for older people so they can live safely in their own homes and stay healthy as they age.