Meals on Wheels People
December 26, 2023
Amount Requested$20,000.00
7710 SW 31st Ave
Portland, Oregon 97219
Bee Davis
Grants Manager
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- Food and Housing Security
Program Support
We enrich the lives of seniors and assist them in maintaining independence by providing nutritious food, human connections, and social support. We also use our expertise and capacity to serve other nutritionally at-risk populations.
$20,000.00
$883,853.00
$16,649,676.00
Yes
For more than 50 years Meals on Wheels People (MOWP) has increased social interactions and matched participants to nutritional services. In addition to addressing food insecurity for seniors and other nutritionally at-risk populations, social interactions and ongoing relationship-building with participants is part of our programming. To meet both the nationally forecasted growth in the senior population and the growth in demand for meals and services from families enrolled in our Meals 4 Kids (M4K) program, in 2021 MOWP purchased a building in SE Portland. This additional space will allow for an expansion of our services and programming and increase access to services for marginalized populations.
M4K was developed in July 2014 to address food insecurity for low-income families experiencing barriers to accessing nutritious food. Modeled after our senior home delivery program, M4K is part of our strategic initiative of Reducing Barriers to Service and is an ongoing facet of MOWP’s programming. The Meals 4 Kids program currently serves approximately 474 families in Portland (of which 72% reside in East Portland) and 65 families in Gresham 33,000 meals a month. This new building will include a dedicated space for our M4K program. The funds requested will be used to produce and provide home delivery of culturally appropriate and nutritious dinners, fresh fruit, vegetables, grains, and dairy to M4K families in need. Program costs such as food and food supplies continue to rise due to inflation. The additional hunger relief benefits that families received during the pandemic and the CARES Act that provided additional funding for nonprofit organizations have come to an end, yet we continue to receive new referrals for families in need of additional nutritional support every day. For the first time in in the history of our M4K program, we have instituted a waiting list due to lack of funding to support the increasingly high need.
The Meals 4 Kids program serves children aged 0-18 years and their caregivers in low-income households. M4K prioritizes families of color and those experiencing food insecurity who are also facing any of the following: Chronic condition(s) or illness of child or caregiver; lack of facility to prepare meals; lack of transportation to access food resources such as food pantries and grocery stores; and other barriers impacting access to food resources and/or ability to prepare meals. In FY23 77 percent of families served in Portland and 86 percent of families served in Gresham identified as black, indigenous, people of color, immigrant or refugee.
Cities of Portland and Gresham, OR.
1. Increase capacity and improve efficiency for staff and volunteers to serve low-income families of color, as well as other vulnerable populations we serve who face food insecurity via our Resiliency Hub in East County.
2. To provide SNAP materials, nutrition relief and resource materials, and other resource support materials to participating families with their delivered meals.
3. To enhance our ability to serve the eastside of Multnomah County and to coordinate culturally sensitive, multilingual services to better meet the needs of diverse groups of community members. We will provide home delivery of at least 300,000 culturally-appropriate, nutritious meals, including fresh, perishable foods to families in need.
1. Increasing the kitchen and staging capacity will improve our ability to serve more at-risk clients, providing a “home” to the Meals 4 Kids for the first time since the program’s implementation. This advancement of our original capital development milestones, includes, but is not limited to: Enhancing emergency preparedness and disaster response capabilities to minimize interrupted services during ice and snow storms, wildfires, excessive heat, earthquakes, and other catastrophes.
2. Multi-lingual resource flyers and support materials (emergency EBT information, emergency home-school supply information, emergency rental assistance, etc.) will be delivered to families with their meal delivery.
3. The new purpose-built space will increase capacity for the raw food storage and meal packing. The new location will also help decrease our carbon footprint with fewer trucks on the road for shorter periods of time. This move will reduce staff time, shorten delivering routes times, and mileage for the M4K program.
1. Through our robust client tracking system, ServTracker, Meals on Wheels People will keep careful track of the number of children and families served by the Meals 4 Kids program before and after the building renovations have been completed and the program has moved to its new location.
2. The inclusion of language-appropriate materials and resources are to be included in all Meals 4 Kids household meal delivery recipients.
3. We will measure fuel savings and the environmental impact created by shorter delivery routes. Moving M4K to the East County will both increase access for volunteers delivering to families in Portland and Gresham and decrease route times.
02/01/2024
01/31/2025
Meals on Wheels People has long-standing collaborative relationships with a variety of community organizations. Our partners include Multnomah, Washington, and Clark counties, city governments, churches and synagogues, parks and recreation programs, Head Start Programs, Centro Cultural, Friendly House, Neighborhood House, Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization, Central City Concern, Project Access NOW, Impact NW, community and senior centers, Oregon Health & Sciences University, Oregon Food Bank, Asian Health & Services Center, Rose Community Development Corporation, Store to Door, Q Center, Home Forward, and more. We are accredited as a Medically Tailored Meals Provider by the Food is Medicine Coalition and collaborate with Kaiser Permanente and PeaceHealth for Medically Tailored Meal research and interventions. These partnerships and many others enable us to reduce isolation, feed individuals and families who face food insecurity, and provide multi-layered, cross-functional services to older adults and families with children in need.
We anticipate funds from Olseth Family Foundation to be applied to the Meals 4 Kids program during February 2024 through January 2025.
Unapproved