Author: andrewYLD

Saturday, October 5

Fun Run/Walk starts at 10:30

Lunch and beer served 11 am to 2 pm

 

Cost:  $25 includes 5K Fun Run/Walk,        

Commemorative Beer/Root Beer Stein, and   

 German sausage lunch.

 

OktoberFeast Shirts available for $10

OktoberFeast Sweatshirts available for $25

Lunch Deal for non-participants:  $10

Beer Deal for non-participants:  $5

Steins available for $3

 

All OktoberFeast events begin and end at our

Meals on Wheels Campus,

1824 Fowler St in south Richland

Snacks will be served along the course.

 

NOT TOO LATE TO REGISTER!

Register now or day of at our Meals on Wheels Campus.

Don’t Want to Run or Walk?

Join us for lunch and a beer or root beer, starting at 11 am.

 

All proceeds benefit

Mid-Columbia Meals on Wheels

to help feed local seniors.

 

 

 Live music & radio broadcast

provided by

Mike McDonnal and

Cherry Creek Media.

As always, there’s lots going on at Meals on Wheels, and the end of summer seems to bring a flurry of activity here. Our excellent crew of volunteers, Site Managers, Cooks, and other staff work tirelessly to make sure that every senior is fed. There are always menus to plan, meals to cook, reports to complete, clients to visit, dishes to wash, and volunteers to thank, all critical tasks to successfully providing meal service.
In addition to our routine duties, staff also works hard on the various projects that enhance our service and help provide funding for our program. Just some of the projects currently in progress or planning are:
• Double the Dollars Challenge: Gesa Credit Union is matching donations up to $10,000! We’ll have more to announce about those donations in the next couple months.
• OktoberFeast Fun Run: We’ve moved our March Fun Run into a more temperate month and paired it with Octoberfest for a fun, family-friendly, casual event, complete with German sausage, pretzels, beer, and root beer! The event starts and ends at our Meals on Wheels Café in Richland.
• New Freezer Building: The building is complete and the freezer nearly operational, which means that we’ll soon be producing our own frozen meals for holidays and weekends.
• Taco Tuesday: Our Kitchen and Café staff are trying out Taco Tuesday on September 10th as an extra meal option in the Café. If the launch is successful, Taco Tuesday may expand to other locations.
• Annual Survey: Our 2019 Client Satisfaction Survey will be distributed in October to help us improve our services and adapt to changing needs.
• Emergency Meals: We’ll soon be putting together our boxes of emergency meals for our home delivery clients to use in the event of bad weather or other unplanned Meals on Wheels closures.
• October All-Staff Training: We close twice each year for mandatory staff training, and October 14th will be a closure date for us. Frozen meals will be delivered in advance for home delivery clients.
• Connell Fall Festival: Our fun and versatile Subaru Outback will roll down the streets of Connell for the popular parade and festival on September 14th, thanks to our Connell staff and volunteers.
We are so grateful for the support of our community and our hard-working volunteers and staff who allow us to try new things and better serve our seniors.

Kristi Thien
Nutrition Services Director

 

Although summer doesn’t officially end until September 22nd, I always view August as the last real month of summer, as the kids all return to school at the end of August or early September. Summer seems to go so quickly! In addition to staff and volunteers enjoying some well-earned time off for vacations, family reunions, and other fun stuff, we’ve been working hard to improve and expand meal service to our seniors.

• You may have noticed a few new recipes lately, or the return of some items we haven’t served in a long time. We hope you’re enjoying the improved variety, and we always welcome feedback from clients. Our Registered Dietitian and kitchen staff work hand-in-hand to create a nutritious and appetizing variety of foods.

• Our new freezer building is nearly complete. The freezer has arrived and looks amazing. We’re currently waiting on freezer installation and some electrical work. After everything is finished, we’ll begin production of all our own frozen meals to help provide the healthiest options we can.

• We’ve had several groups volunteer with our agency in the past month, including New Vintage Church, Mission Support Alliance, and the interns from CliftonLarsonAllen Accounting. We appreciate the help they provide, as well as the energy they bring to our agency!

• Our Double the Dollars Challenge will run the entire month of August. Gesa Credit Union will match all donations, dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000. We’re so grateful to Gesa, and we’re hoping for good community support of this fundraiser. All proceeds raised will go directly to purchasing meal for our seniors.

• We’re gearing up for our 2019 Fun Run. We’ve moved our run from it’s former frosty date in March to what we hope will be a much warmer October date. We’ve changed the event to an OktoberFeast Fun Run, which will start and end at our Café/Central Kitchen on the morning of Saturday, October 5th.

Although our summer is clearly crazy-busy and sometimes overwhelming, we try to keep our eyes on our mission of caring for seniors to help them stay independent and healthy.

Kristi Thien
Nutrition Services Director

Happy Independence Day to all of you! I’d like to consider all of July as Independence Month here at Meals on Wheels. Our mission is to help keep seniors independent and in their own homes by providing a daily nutritious meal that requires no preparation and no cleanup. Our Home Care Services sister agency works toward that same goal of maintaining independence by providing light housekeeping, transportation, and personal care.
Even as we work to preserve senior independence, our agency is completely dependent on our wonderful supporters to help us achieve our mission. Our supporters include our unbelievably dedicated volunteers and staff who are all so generous in sharing their time and talents; the private and corporate donors who demonstrate their belief in our mission and our seniors through their financial generosity; our Board of Directors who steer our agency; our local and State Aging and Long Term Care who works to provide funding; and our senior participants who advocate for our program, encourage our volunteers, or contribute toward the cost of their meals. We are so grateful for the support from everyone who supports our mission.
July also contains lots of those sort of made up “national holidays” that are so popular now. Although July marks both National Gingersnap Day and National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, I’m more interested to see that July 11th has been designated as National Cheer Up the Lonely Day. I don’t actually consider it a holiday, but I think it’s a great reminder for all of us to take a little time to visit with someone we know who might be feeling a little lonely. A short visit or phone call can definitely impact all of us for the better, something to which our volunteer drivers and dining room staff can certainly attest.
I hope you all enjoy a very fun, cheerful. and independent month and Fourth of July!

Kristi Thien

I recently stumbled onto some nostalgic photos and info in our computer system; most notable for me was the logo I’ve included on the right. When Senior Life Resources began its work in 1974 as Benton-Franklin Council on Aging, the meals program was called Bread ‘n Butter. At that time, funding was available for only 12 clients!
45 years later, we’ll serve well over 200,000 meals to about 2,400 clients in 2019. To say we’ve come a long way is an understatement. In my 10+ years with Meals on Wheels, I’ve seen us move from our leased, cramped location on Gage, where we shared offices and literally had to take turns making phone calls, to our own Fowler Street Campus where we have our functional new offices and amazing Central Kitchen. We are so grateful for the work and support that brought us to this point!
We’ve certainly evolved, but we’re not done. If you visit our campus today, you’ll see that we’re adding a large metal building. As wonderful as our Central Kitchen is, our walk-in freezer is bursting at the seams. The new building will house a second walk-in freezer that will allow us to pro-duce our own frozen meals for clients to eat on weekends and holidays. We know it’s important to take this step so we can provide meals that are as nutritious, economical, and tasty as possible.
We’ll continue to work toward improvement in other ways as well. We always have ideas for new programs and partner-ships, recipes and menu items. I hope that in 45 years, our current operation will seem quaint and old-fashioned, because it will mean that we’ve worked to grow to meet the needs of our community.

Kristi Thien
Nutrition Services Director

Every May, the nation is reminded to celebrate Older
Americans Month. Here at Meals on Wheels, I’d like to
think we celebrate older Americans every day by serving
meals and providing social contact for our senior
participants.
In addition, the volunteers who provide service to our
participants are largely seniors themselves: 3/4 of our
volunteers are over age 60, and our oldest volunteer
driver is 92 years old! All our volunteers truly live out this
year’s theme of Connect, Create, and Contribute. I can’t
think of any group who contributes more to the wellbeing
and happiness of local seniors than our amazing
volunteers!
If nothing else, I hope that Older Americans Month
prompts us all to take time to talk with a senior and
appreciate his/her contribution to our world!

Kristi Thien
Nutrition Services Director

What a relief it is that spring is finally here! We’re no longer obsessing about our weather and worrying if snowy
conditions are safe for volunteers to attempt delivery. Although there’s no way to return our newly-gray hair
back to its original state, we’re certainly feeling more optimistic and light-hearted here.
Our mood at Meals on Wheels has also been elevated by progress to our Fowler Street campus. When we built
our office building and Central Kitchen/Café a few years ago, we were left with a giant mountain of dirt and
rocks which was unsightly and potentially dangerous. Work to clear the site began last fall, and we now have
level ground which we’ve covered in gravel, providing much needed additional staff parking. The new staff
parking lot frees up spots for guests at our Café and office.
We have some other big news about our Fowler Street campus! We have broken ground on an accessory shed
which will house another walk-in-freezer. Only two years into our new kitchen, we’ve pretty well maxed out our
current freezer, so we are very grateful to be moving forward with this building. The second freezer will allow us
to create our own frozen meals, giving us complete control of exactly what goes into the meals.
At this time, we’re not at liberty to announce the primary funder of this project, but we are the grateful
recipients of $50,000 from a well-known, community-minded company. We’re excited to provide full funding
details in the future.
Best wishes to you all for a happy and healthy spring!

Kristi Thien
Nutrition Services Director

As I’m writing this newsletter, I’m so grateful to look out my window and see no new snow falling from the sky!  It’s true that we have small mountains of snow piled on the edges of our parking lot, but the parking lot itself is bare and safe, thanks to the diligent efforts of our staff, who have spent countless hours shoveling, scraping, sweeping, and applying ice melt.  We’ve survived 6 consecutive snow closure days, the longest in my 10 years with Meals on Wheels, and 2 emergency meal delivery days.  I think we’re officially tired of snow! 

Although it probably sounds like I’m whining about snow, a strange complaint for a native Montanan, I’d have to say that I’m bragging at the same time.  As we so often see during difficult times, the challenges created by the snow brought out the best in our clients, our volunteers, our staff, and our community.  A few of the amazing and caring acts I witnessed:

• Site Managers showing incredible compassion when calling clients to check on them.
• Meals on Wheels clients turning the tables by calling to check on the safety of volunteers and staff.
• Volunteers dropping by clients’ homes to make sure they were ok.
• Administrative staff leaving their own work to help make sure clients received emergency meals.
• Kitchen staff filling other positions to help take care of clients.
• Fire fighters taking time out of their personal lives to deliver emergency meals.
• Office staff braving crazy road conditions to answer phones and reassure clients.
• An outpouring of community support, offering assistance of nearly every kind.

As thankful as I am for the end of the snow, I’m also grateful to work with such a hard-working and dedicated team of staff and volunteers.  And I’m proud to live in a community like ours that esteems and cares for our    seniors.   Thanks to all of you!

 

 

 

 

The first month of the year has already passed, and it seems like January was nothing but a whirlwind (maybe even a tornado) at our office, as we hustled to wrap up our fiscal year and evaluate 2018 final service numbers.  And after reviewing our 2018, it’s clear that our hard work resulted in many accomplishments of which our staff and volunteers should be extremely proud:

• Number of meals served: 209,000       16% more meals were served than in 2017!
• Number of clients served: 2,341 7% increase
• Number of volunteers: 480 9% increase
• Volunteers hours donated: 29,639 11% increase
• Volunteer miles driven: 95,604 8% increase

We clearly had a huge year in 2018, helping seniors from Prosser to Tri-Cities to Connell, and all points between.  Increasing the number of meals we serve by 16% in one year comes with big impact on our agency in so many ways.  Our volunteers, literally the heart and soul of our organization, are pushed to work harder and more often.  Our staff, dedicated and committed to our cause, is also pushed to take on more responsibility and to increase efficiency in order for us to grow our program without overextending our budget. 

2019 brings many exciting challenges and new opportunities.  We’re starting a couple new pilot programs, CRIMP (Community Rapid Intervention Meal Program) and Moneta Project, and we’re exploring how we might improve our service to our seniors in a couple different areas.  And as always, we’ll be doing our best to help our local seniors remain independent and in their homes as long as possible.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!