This year will be the 49th year there has been delivery meals to clients who are homebound because of advanced age, physical or mental challenges, but there have been some changes.

“A few adjustments had to be made due to COVID-19,” according to Heidi Fareri, Executive Director of Monroe County Meals.

Volunteers always delivered daily Monday through Friday, but due to COVID-19, in order to minimize face-to-face contact, the clients now receive frozen meals once a week. The clients are given enough meals for lunch and dinner for seven days along with a bag of fruits and vegetables.

“In some ways it is nicer because it gives the client a choice to pick what meal they want instead having to eat the one meal delivered that day,” she said.

She said they still maintain daily routes for clients who don’t have the ability to store the frozen meals or they are too fragile and not able to retrieve the meals from their doorsteps.

Another change is since volunteers now only deliver on Mondays, those who used to deliver other days are now helping on Monday.

“By doing that we were able break up the routes. The routes that once took three to four hours became less than two hours, making better use of our volunteers,” Fareri said.

Number increase

Monroe County Meals on Wheels has seen an increase of clients since the pandemic began, especially the elderly.

“We just added eight new clients, plus a family where both the parents and two children are not able to leave the house. We fix a tray family style and deliver every day,” Fareri said.

Meals on Wheels also has a pet program to help clients to feed their pets, so if delivering meals is not something you think you would like, donating cat and dog food might be a good way to help out.

If you enjoy letter writing, Fareri said volunteering to write cheerful notes to clients, especially since the pandemic restrictions, is something they look forward to.

For more information on the pet program, reach pet program coordinator Stacey Koeck at skoeck@monroemeals.org.

To volunteer to deliver meals or write cheery note cards, you can reach the volunteer manager at: lraudabaugh@monroemeals.org.