Winter Weather Creates Challenges For Meals On Wheels - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

Winter Weather Creates Challenges For Meals On Wheels

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by Lindsay Nadrich, KHQ Local News Reporter - email

SPOKANE, Wash. - For Meals On Wheels in Spokane, the snow means more people are counting on the hot meal deliveries.

The program currently serves 235 seniors in the community and 80 through the senior center. During the cold winter weather, the need for the program is even greater.

"A lot of our seniors who receive meals are extremely fragile and do not go out Monday through Friday," said Meals On Wheels Executive Director Mollie Dalpae.  "In the summer, spring and fall where it is a little nicer weather, they might have one or two days where they get out do a little shopping or things like that and they just do not dare do that because of a broken hip could be a fatal fall."

Therefore, during the Winter months, volunteers like Constantine Petropoulous are busier.

"They are more dependent on the meals I believe in winter time than the summer time, so you have a few more deliveries because you have more people dependent on the meals," Petropoulous said.

With each door-to-door delivery, it is apparent just how much it means to the people who need it.

"Most of them only get one hot meal a day and this is the one," Petropoulous said.

The program provides meals to the seniors seven days a week, but there is more to it than just the food.

"They cannot get out, a lot of them, and for a lot of them, you are the only person they see during the day," Petropoulous said. "The other aspect of this is you have to check on them to make sure that they are doing fine."

While the food is the reason for the delivery, building and maintaining relationships becomes a big part of the experience.

"It is a good need for the people and you get to know some of the people and strike up somewhat of a relationship," Petropoulous said. "These people are in need of a service that needs to be met."

Meals On Wheels always needs volunteers. It has an event coming up on February 14th that the program really needs people to sign up for.