With Thanksgiving just around the corner, Meals on Wheels organizations in the First State are working to provide seniors with nutritious food on the holiday.
The MANNA program at Dover’s Modern Maturity Center administers Meals on Wheels in Kent County. The center’s President and CEO Carolyn Fredricks says her organization had a big Thanksgiving event last week.
“Last week on Thursday, we fed about 3000 people and 1500 to 1800 of those were Meals on Wheels clients, so they got a Thanksgiving dinner that day," she said.
But that doesn’t mean the program is taking Thanksgiving off. Fredricks says her staff reached out to Meals on Wheels clients ahead of Thanksgiving to see who had plans with family and who still needed meal service.
“This year we had 480 people that said they didn't have any way to have a Thanksgiving meal," she said. "These are people that don't have family. They're going to be by themselves and they just needed a Thanksgiving meal.”
To serve those people, volunteers froze food from last week’s Thanksgiving event. On Thursday, those frozen meals will be distributed to the nearly 500 people in Kent County who requested them.
Fredricks says they often see an uptick in volunteers on the holidays.
"People want to come in and help on Thanksgiving and Christmas because their kids are out of school," she said. "And this is awesome because they can show their kids how important it is to think of others.“
But she says the time after the holidays can be a challenge, when wintery weather makes it difficult for some volunteers to hit the roads.
