Teamwork key to Meals onWheels success
The Meals on Wheels service received its largest donation to date after the completion of the Teamwork Training, 23 Days of Christmas campaign.
The service that provides meals to isolated seniors, who cannot make meals for themselves, received $26,000 from the 2017 campaign, bringing the amount raised by Teamwork Training to more than $175,000.
Ryan Miller, owner of Teamwork Training, says he is proud of the work that was done to support an organization that is doing good things to provide resources to venerable people in the community.
“We are very happy to report this year that highest amount in the history of the campaign and $26,000 was raised this year through the honorary chefs and Christmas card campaign,” says Miller. “It really is a fantastic achievement for a wonderful organization.”
Miller says that they could not have raised the money without the support of their local partners of the campaign, Cupper’s Coffee and Tea, Crazy Cakes and Urban Grocer. Thirtythree other local organizations have contributed through the Meals on Wheels, Head Chefs and Sous Chefs sponsorships.
The Lethbridge Senior Citizens Organization (LSCO) adopted the Meals on Wheels service five years ago to provide people with meals who are recovering from surgery, or live with conditions that make it difficult to cook. Rob Miyashiro, Executive Director of LSCO, says the money goes a long way to keep costs down and to enhance the services.
“We haven’t raised the fees to the customers and we have even lowered some of the fees,” says Miyashiro. “There is less tiers in the structure and we have made it into a support system which allows us to focus on supporting people that are receiving the meals as well as keeping the price down.”
About 100 hot meals a day are personally delivered by the LSCO to each person’s home by a team of volunteers. Marlene Van Eden, Support Service Coordinator for the LSCO, oversees the Meals on Wheels program and says the contribution from Teamwork Training will spread far throughout the program.
“It is really great because the money does go a long way and gets subsidized through the program,” says Van Eden. “We have been able to keep the cost down of our Meals on Wheels program even though food prices have gone up.”
The non-profit organization has been running in Lethbridge since 1970 and now provides 6580 seniors a day with warm, nutritious meals without ever missing a date. The volunteers have never missed a day of delivery since the beginning of the program, and have even trucked though snowstorms that have shut down the city.
Meals on Wheels is not only available to senior citizens, but to anyone who are confined to their homes due to illness or injury. For people interested in accessing the service, people are encouraged to contact the Meals on Wheels office at (403) 327-7990.