PREBLE COUNTY — GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement that unleashes the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and their world.
GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past eight years, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity. Over the past three years, we have seen this collaboration of giving, celebrating and doing good first hand at the Senior Activities Center.
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we quickly went from being an active senior center that provided services to providing core services of transportation, homemaking, and Meals on Wheels.
These services ensured that our seniors were able to stay safe and at home. Our Meals on Wheels Program more than doubled from 150 clients per day to 309 clients per day. We also delivered puzzles, word finds, pet food, walkers, etc. We even had one 90-year-old lady who had lost her husband of 75 years. All she wanted was a Hershey’s bar, so we delivered a Hershey’s bar to her.
Let’s talk perspective. In January, we delivered 3,010 meals to our clients, and in February we delivered 2,300 meals to clients. We closed for shutdown on March 21, and for the month of March we delivered 5,175 meals.
This included one hot meal, a second meal, plus what we call a bag of seven. The bag of seven provided enough food sustenance to last seven days, again, ensuring that our senior clients could stay safe and at home.
Come April, can you guess how many meals we delivered? 19,170! 19,170 seniors that could have gone hungry, or put their wellbeing at risk. Our organization has to look at the silver lining of this pandemic, as helping feed more seniors than we even knew were in need.
As for our clients, here are a few of their testimonies. When asked, “How much is this program (Meals on Wheels) helping you?”
“I thank God for you all. I could not have done it without your help.” “More than you will ever know, I can’t put into words, and Thank You Very Much. God Bless All.”
When asked to comment about the 7-day bag: “It’s an answer to my prayers.” “I’m diabetic and eat five small meals per day!” “Thank you so much. I appreciate that you try so hard to help!”
We went from an average of 175 meals per day to clients, all the way up to 309 clients! We are grateful for the volunteers that showed up to help deliver as well as our dedicated staff and especially our kitchen staff who worked their butts off in our tiny little kitchen.
Don’t stop now, our seniors continue to need your donation dollars to help keep them fed safe and at home through our Sponsor-A-Senior Program. It costs $600 to feed a senior for one year, $50 a month, or $12.50 a week. No donation is too small.
You can donate via our website at www.prebleseniorcenter.org/support/donate, or mail a check or stop by our senior center at 800 East St. Clair Street in Eaton. We also accept cash and charge if you stop by, or drive through our Drive Thru Thursdays from 2-3 p.m.
We get this opportunity to take care of our local seniors. Grammy deserves her Hershey’s bar and then some.
To stay up to date on all of our activities, trips and senior news sign up to receive our bi-monthly newsletter the “Senior Scene.” Membership at the Senior Center is $10 a year. In addition to other benefits, members automatically receive our bi-monthly “Senior Scene” newsletter which features all our latest news and activities, additional benefits are discounts on trips and select activities.
Like our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/preblecountycouncilonaging/ or give us a call at 937-456-4947. Visit our website at www.PrebleSeniorCenter.org.
