A Meal For Everyone With Meals On Wheels, Poughkeepsie
Meals On Wheels has their hands full this holiday season due to the pandemic impacting so many families in the Poughkeepsie area in need of assistance.
The organization is striving to make these tough times easier on the elderly and other in need individuals who may not have needed the help of MOW previously.
Staff member, Judy Lombardi, was busy at work when she took a moment to answer some questions about the holiday season, “We deliver the food directly to our client’s homes, and we haven’t had to change any of our other policies other than wearing masks and using hand sanitizer for our drivers that deliver and they aren’t going into any of our client’s homes. Instead they leave the meal for them and once they answer the door so they don’t have to make contact with any clients.”
MOW of Poughkeepsie currently serves 52 clients and delivers 52 meals every day. These numbers change daily, however, based on which clients request meals. And although MOW don’t deliver meals themselves on Thanksgiving day and other major holidays, they have a wonderful volunteer by the name of Dan Elderkin who organizes the meals and delivery on Thanksgiving for clients who request a meal for the day.
Elderkin and his family have been helping MOW with Thanksgiving day deliveries for the last 10 years. Lombardi spoke of her praises about Elderkin and the support his family provided to MOW each year. This year, his work is especially appreciated because of the pandemic.
“I send out a letter because a lot of our clients have families and spend the holidays with their families and usually, sometimes it only like six or seven people that want the [Thanksgiving] meal, but this year I think there are around seventeen people that want the meal for obvious reasons, so we have a volunteer, and he and his family prepare the meal and we provide him with a route and he delivers them to the clients.”
Lombardi said that there has been a direct correlation with COVID and the number of people who have requested meals since March, saying they saw a rise in their clientele when everything closed in the first few weeks of quarantine. She emphasised that they not only provided support to the elderly in the community, but to “anyone in the community who needs a meal.”
As more people have adapted to this new social climate, clients have slowly left the MOW delivery list, but there is no doubt that the Thanksgiving route has added individuals.
“Normally I only have six or seven people that want the Thanksgiving meal but this year I think I have seventeen people that are getting the Thanksgiving meal, and that’s a direct correlation to the COVID situation. I think people can’t have family members visit or can’t go and see their family members. I just had somebody now call me, he was supposed to be going away but his plans got canceled so he just called and told me he wanted the meal.”
Lombardi is uncertain what the future of the pandemic will bring, but was optimistic that no matter what happened, MOW will always provide for members of the community who need a meal on wheels.
