Meals on Wheels pet pantry helps keep seniors’ pets fed

Pets can do wonders for a senior’s high quality of lifetime. Numerous seniors depend on the relationships they variety with their furry pals to stay clear of loneliness and to sense a perception of reason. But when there is not more than enough food items to go all over, some seniors may well make a decision to sacrifice some of their possess provisions to keep their animals fed and wholesome. 

Shirley Robinson, who’s 74, stated she as soon as anxious about how she would discover food stuff for her two pet canine, Lucky and Max. But now, as a consumer of Meals On Wheels Atlanta’s Pet Pantry plan, she will get food stuff for them delivered when the agency’s volunteers deliver food for her. “That is so amazing,” she stated. “That is wonderful.” 

MOWA has been serving seniors having difficulties with hunger due to the fact 1965. As the agency grew from its humble beginnings as a soup kitchen to a sophisticated program that serves additional than 600,000 meals to metro Atlanta seniors’ each calendar year, workers customers realized that seniors delivering food for their animals produced a trouble the agency required to support handle. In 2010, MOWA begun giving pet meals and pet treatment merchandise to consumers who have to have them as a result of its Pet Pantry.

“There was a senior who called and was close to tears as she expressed her deepest appreciation for her plan,” reported Main Innovation & Business Development Director Jason Tucker, who oversees the Pet Pantry. “She experienced operate out of funds, and she had been feeding the pet dog her food… she was down to her very last couple of bucks, and she was having to make a decision about how to get foodstuff for her pets.”

And the will need keeps escalating.

“Last yr we shipped about 3,350 lbs of pet meals,” Tucker stated. “This 12 months, we anticipate providing 3,500 to 3,600 pounds of food stuff. Next calendar year, in 2023, we job that we may possibly get up to 4,400 pounds of foods.”

Via the years, MOWA has adjusted in a number of methods to most effective serve the switching demands of their consumers. In 2017, when personnel members realized that lots of seniors did not get any foods outdoors of the 7 foods the company supplied just about every week, MOWA applied a breakfast system with shelf-secure breakfast provisions.

Another illustration of a services that MOWA has expanded to give is property repairs, enabling seniors to age in position. Coupled with the socialization and camaraderie that arrives along with visits from volunteers when they deliver food, these expert services are crucial to helping seniors endure and prosper. 

In addition to food items for cats and puppies, the Pet Pantry also delivers requirements these kinds of as litter boxes, leashes, pet food bowls, beds, and even toys. Those people materials are shipped when a thirty day period. About 19% of the seniors served by MOWA accessibility the Pet Pantry.

Although the greater part of the organization’s overall annual funding comes from Meals On Wheels nationwide grants and non-public fundraising, partnerships this kind of as the Atlanta Humane Society also offer food and products to the Pet Pantry.

“Our seniors stay on your own, most of them, so delivering that opportunity to join with a residing being is so vital to their wellbeing and psychological condition,” Tucker mentioned. “Those seniors that have pets have a continuous connection and a kind of socialization. Seniors look at their animals as aspect of their relatives, and it is so essential for us to give services to the senior and the pet to make the relatives as a total balanced and joyful.”

This calendar year, with the enable of building associates Choate Design, ASD SKY, and Structure Galleria Kitchen area and Bathtub Studio, MOWA has been renovating its headquarters and creating out a new kitchen. As soon as done, staff customers venture they will be in a position to broaden their offerings from extra than 1,800 meals each and every day to 3,500 foods for every working day. 

“We want the group to have an understanding of that by supporting Meals on Wheels Atlanta as a result of volunteering or economical help, you are supporting hundreds of our senior neighbors and their furry pals. That is our mission – to guidance senior independence,” Tucker explained. 

“Additional plans like the Pet Pantry and the breakfast system, that’s how we check out to close the gaps that seniors face that we listen to about from our volunteers and the seniors who call in. As we use innovation to think about methods that we can shut those people gaps for seniors, we definitely count on the local community to aid us via giving their time and economical assist.” 

If you’d like to study more, get associated, or donate to Meals on Wheels Atlanta, stop by their website www.mowatl.org/donations. 

Correction: In a preceding edition of this story, the Atlanta Humane Culture was incorrectly referred to as the Atlanta Humane Association. We apologize for the mistake.