Author: andrewYLD

Happy Thanksgiving! Each year, Thanksgiving is a good reminder to me to express gratitude for the many folks who make Mid-Columbia Meals on Wheels a success, including the entire Meals on Wheels team. Our team includes generous and dedicated volunteers, staff, donors, sponsors, grant-funders, our friends at Aging & Long Term Care, our Senior Life Resources Finance, Payroll, & Human Resources teams, our Home Care Services team, and so many more. Without ALL of these wonderful supporters, our program and our services would be greatly diminished. I am thankful for every person who contributes their time and talent to our agency.

This year, I have an additional bit of gratitude for Meals on Wheels in general. At the end of October, I will volunteered for a day at the Meals on Wheels program in Great Falls, Montana—my hometown. The program in Great Falls serves three households of my family members, and I am eternally grateful for the care and kindness, meals and compassion, provided by their staff and volunteers. I am thankful that my family can depend on the nutritious meals and the daily visit with the drivers. I’m also thankful for my service opportunity to contribute to this program that helps my family members remain living independently in their own homes.

As I’m finishing my final months of work before retirement in February, I’m thankful for my 14+ years of
work with Mid-Columbia Meals on Wheels. I believe that it’s an honor and a privilege to serve our community, and our work at Meals on Wheels is incredibly fulfilling. Even on our most challenging days, our service makes the lives of our seniors just a bit better, and we are so fortunate to serve the folks whose work has built our community. We are thankful for each and every one of the wonderful seniors we serve and whose presence in our lives enriches us.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Many years ago, I read The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw. I loved the book, and I totally identified with his description of his father. Mr. Brokaw wrote that his dad’s measure of a good day was based on the amount of work he completed during the day. I also tend to rate the success of my day based on that standard of what I’ve accomplished.
At Meals on Wheels, there are lots of metrics we can use to rate our success, some of them more tangible than others. Measurable outcomes for 2022 include that during the first 8 months of the year, our staff and volunteers have:
• Served nearly 140,000 meals to local seniors
• Volunteered over 20,000 hours
• Driven as many miles as in all of 2021 (Over 58,000 miles!)
In addition to these measurable items, there are always lots of things happening behind the scenes, including:
• Training lots of new staff members,
• A pilot project to offer customized frozen meal packs,
• Grant writing and reporting,
• Client assessments and enrollments,
• Work on development of renal meal packs to better serve client receiving dialysis,
• Coalition work to improve transportation options for local seniors.
There is never a shortage of work at our agency, and we strive to accomplish things that help our seniors remain living independently and in their own homes as long as possible. Thanks to the hard work of our amazing team of paid and volunteer staff, I can honestly say that every day is a good day, with much accomplished for our community!

Our Meals on Wheels team has been extra busy on a big ole project lately. In addition to our usual focus on feeding seniors, assisting their pets, and providing peripheral services such as Farmers Market vouchers and Basic Food outreach, we’re finalizing details for our OktoberFeast  fundraising event. On Saturday, October 1st, OktoberFeast will be an opportunity for us to raise community awareness for our services, provide a family-friendly celebration, and raise funds for senior services, all at the same time!

Our festivities begin with a  fun run/walk along the river starting at 10 am. Unlike most fun runs, we will also serve  yummy German-themed snacks along the way. Although the course is set for a standard 5K event, participants may turn around whenever they desire (although they will miss the gummy bears at the halfway mark), and participants do not need to walk or run at all if they don’t wish to. Folks who only want to eat or enjoy the beer garden can sign up just for those activities!

Following the run/walk, our campus will be filled with live music, a German sausage lunch, root beer, adult beer garden, the Lamb Weston French fry trailer, a fun kid zone, and even a canine corner with dog treats! Mike McDonnell from Townsquare Media will be on site as our emcee. The $40 entry fee for the event includes a t-shirt, commemorative mug, and lunch. We think it’s the best buy in town.

We owe a world of thanks to our wonderful sponsors, our Senior Life Resources Board of Directors, our OktoberFeast Committee, and the many wonderful staff and volunteers who will help make OktoberFeast a fun fundraising event!  We hope that many folks from our community participate to show their support for our local seniors.

I also want to say a special thank-you to our clients and volunteers who have been so supportive through our staffing transitions! We’ve found some excellent new staff to join our Meals on Wheels team, and we’re excited to let their talents shine in their new roles. We all look forward to getting to know them better!

Happy August! As always, we have lots to report. Although there’s lots of good stuff happening (like our upcoming OktoberFeast), I’m sorry to say that there are also some less-than-ideal circumstances that are presenting real challenges for us. After an abnormally cool spring and June, the heat has definitely hit Tri-Cities. And with the heat come extra worries regarding the well-being of our seniors. We’ve included some information about dealing with the heat on pages 5 & 6. I think the best summary of that info is that during the heat of the day, we should all try to stay inside in air conditioning whenever possible,
drink lots of water, and avoid overexertion. Seniors are particularly vulnerable to heat-related problems, so our clientele is at higher risk in these extreme temperatures.

In addition to heat-related worries, we have a couple other big stressors:

1. Like many locations across the country, labor shortages are also a nearly-constant worry. Our local labor shortage has impacted both non-profit and for-profit companies. Meals on Wheels currently has 8 open positions, several of which have been open for months. We have received very few applications for these positions. Our current staff has continued to absorb extra duties, but we are in desperate need of more employees.
   What we all can do to help: If you know of anyone who would enjoy working with a great team serving wonderful seniors, please send them our way! The hours are very appealing to most folks—no weekends or evenings.
2. COVID is making a huge resurgence. We have many clients, volunteers, and staff who are currently suffering from COVID, and the issue seems to be increasing nearly daily. Our staff is already stretched thin, so temporarily losing even a few staff to illness has huge impact on our agency and the services we are able to provide to our seniors.
   What we all can do to help: I encourage everyone to follow recommended practices to help limit the spread of COVID (and other bugs): observing safe social distancing, wearing face masks indoors, and avoiding contact with folks who have tested positive or are showing symptoms of COVID.

Despite the challenges we face, our staff and volunteers at Meals on Wheels continue to serve our seniors and to demonstrate the best in humanity. They all know that it is a privilege to serve the wonderful seniors in our community!

Good Golly, we’re already halfway through 2022! As I look at all the activity so far this year, I’m happy to say that we’ve already served over 100,000 meals to more than 1,400 clients. In the last couple months, we’ve re-opened all 8 of our dining sites, and our Service Coordinators have returned to in-person home visits. Our staff is getting back in the groove of completing the many details needed to accomplish both home delivery and in-person dining.

Although I’m celebrating these steps forward, we are also facing significant staffing challenges:
· We are currently unable to resume Friday hot meal home deliveries because we haven’t yet found enough volunteers to drive all the routes.
· Our staff has been decimated with COVID cases and other health issues, right in the middle of vacation season.
· We have several open positions for which we have received very few applicants. (As a side note, all our employees & volunteers have to pass a thorough background check as a precaution to protect our clients.)

With various staff absent for days or weeks at a time, I’m happy to report that both our paid & volunteer staff have all stepped up in significant ways to make sure we get meals prepared and served. So many details are required in order to serve 18,000-ish meals each month—paperwork, food orders, meal prep & packaging, reports, and a whole lot more.

As I’ve helped a bit to provide coverage for other positions, I’m constantly reminded how very complicated and difficult every job here is . . . and how easy it is to make a mistake! Our staff members truly become masters of their positions, and even our folks who are still new to us seem to learn a million new skills incredibly quickly. As always, I’m just grateful to work with such dedicated and skilled coworkers.

I’m also grateful for the wonderful folks we serve. We all love meeting our seniors, and we consider it a privilege to serve and share time with them. As we look to the new month, I want to wish all our seniors, volunteers, and staff a wonderful and safe Independence Day!

Whew! I can’t even describe how much is happening at our place as we implement new protocols, plan for increased service, hire new employees, and just continue with the day-to-day operation of our program. A few bits of info I’d like to share:

• We have set May 2nd as our very tentative date to re-open our Senior Dining Centers. I hesitate to even mention the date because the last time we made plans to reopen, we had to nearly immediately abandon all plans when the Omicron variant swept through our community. However, we are so excited about the possibility of eat-in dining that I just had to share!  We’re all keeping our fingers, toes, and eyeballs crossed for good luck!
• We have updated our home delivery policy to allow our drivers to bring meals directly into homes if clients wish them to do so. For now, drivers will continue to wear masks to offer additional protection for our community. We know that we not only serve a vulnerable population, but many of our staff and volunteers are vulnerable themselves or are caregivers to folks in compromised health. Some of our volunteer drivers may not feel comfortable entering homes, and we certainly aren’t requiring that they enter. Protocols will continue to change in response to changing COVID conditions.
• Our kitchen staff has been hard at work developing a vegetarian menu. As we begin, the vegetarian program will be fairly limited in scope but may expand if participation is high. Please call our office if you would like to try the vegetarian meals.
• We’re trying something new right before Easter. We’ll serve a ham dinner on Thursday, April 13th. And just for fun, our Meals on Wheels admin team will help kitchen staff by making about 1,200 deviled eggs for the meal!
• Our parent company, Senior Life Resources, has officially completed the final building on our campus. Our Admin Services team, which includes Finance and Human Resources, is busy moving into their new offices. Their move provides much-needed storage at our current building.
• On a personal note, I have announced my retirement date in February of 2023. I wanted to provide as much notice as possible to allow plenty of time to find exactly the right person for the job and to provide many months of training and orientation. We’ve already begun the recruitment process and will offer more updates as they develop. Although I will be sad to leave this wonderful team, I will also be grateful to have more time to spend with my family, including my own mother and in-laws.

As a final and most important note, I want to mention that April is Volunteer Appreciation Month. I don’t know what we would do without our wonderful volunteers. They help with all facets of our program, including prepping, packaging, delivering, & serving meals, helping with administrative tasks, phoning our homebound clients, and so much more! We encourage all of our clients and community to say a friendly thank-you to the Meals on Wheels volunteers  in their lives.

Happy Spring!

Spring is nearly here, which for me is great reason to celebrate! I love the warmer weather, sunshine, and thoughts
of gardening. I’m happy to spend more time outside, for sure.. We also have many reasons to celebrate here at
Meals on Wheels:

• Thanks to superhuman efforts from our staff, and eager response to our volunteer campaign, we have successfully transitioned to 4 days a week of home delivery and take-out hot & frozen meals at our dining centers.

• Our new volunteers are already having a great impact on our program.. Pictures of many of the new volunteers
are shown on pages 2-4 of this newsletter.

• We are grateful for the many long-time/veteran volunteers who have stepped up to help new volunteers learn
the finer points of their volunteer positions.

• Our community has continued to support us through donations, encouragement, and sharing our mission.

• Our Richland Café drive-thru continues to serve a loyal group who pick up hot meals Monday through Friday.

• Local COVID cases are finally starting to decrease, which offers hope that we’ll be able to return to serving meals
at our community/senior centers fairly soon. (Our collective fingers are definitely crossed!)

Thank you to everyone who has supported our agency. I hope that everyone connected to our program will find
reason to celebrate this spring!

Happy Valentine’s Month! I’m writing this update from my home today, where I am recovering from a
bout with COVID-19. I am pleased to say that I’m doing well. I am grateful that I was fully vaccinated,
including my booster, which resulted in a relatively minor case. My husband and I are both consistent
mask wearers and avoid large groups of people, but the virus still snuck in!

My personal experience with the virus has brought to mind a few thoughts. First, I want to mention how thankful I was
that my husband & I were prepared for illness; we had healthy food, drinks, and plenty of cold and fever-relieving
medication already on hand. Being prepared certainly made my sick time much more manageable and less stressful,
and I encourage everyone to be ready, just in case.

I also want to emphasize our agency’s commitment to doing whatever we can to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Since the onset of the pandemic, our parent company, Senior Life Resources (SLR), has worked hard to procure
enough face masks, sanitizer, and other PPE to ensure that our staff, volunteers, and clients are well supplied. SLR has
never flagged in their commitment to keep our work environment as safe as possible on behalf of our wonderful
clients, volunteers, and staff.

Serving a vulnerable senior population definitely increases the criticality of our continued diligence and persistence in
following safe protocols. We rely on the advice of Center for Disease Control, Washington State Department of Health,
and our dedicated local team at the Benton Franklin Health District. We work hard to follow the most current recommendations from these scientists and doctors in hopes of providing safe food served in a safe manner.

Each month, we ask our clients to please wear a mask during deliveries or meal pick-up. Wearing a mask during those
brief interactions not only protects our clients, but also the wonderful volunteers who donate their time to serve their
senior neighbors. I’m sorry to say that the extremely contagious Omicron variant is prolific in our community, and it’s
starting to reach some of our volunteers and clients. For everyone’s safety, I implore all clients to PLEASE honor our
volunteers (& their families!) by wearing a mask when the volunteer drivers provide home delivery or serve food at our
drive-thru or take-out sites.

We are grateful that our volunteers and staff have continued to serve our community through the pandemic, and we’ll
continue to work hard to protect their health.