Good Golly, we’re already halfway through 2022! As I look at all the activity so far this year, I’m happy to say that we’ve already served over 100,000 meals to more than 1,400 clients. In the last couple months, we’ve re-opened all 8 of our dining sites, and our Service Coordinators have returned to in-person home visits. Our staff is getting back in the groove of completing the many details needed to accomplish both home delivery and in-person dining.
Although I’m celebrating these steps forward, we are also facing significant staffing challenges:
· We are currently unable to resume Friday hot meal home deliveries because we haven’t yet found enough volunteers to drive all the routes.
· Our staff has been decimated with COVID cases and other health issues, right in the middle of vacation season.
· We have several open positions for which we have received very few applicants. (As a side note, all our employees & volunteers have to pass a thorough background check as a precaution to protect our clients.)
With various staff absent for days or weeks at a time, I’m happy to report that both our paid & volunteer staff have all stepped up in significant ways to make sure we get meals prepared and served. So many details are required in order to serve 18,000-ish meals each month—paperwork, food orders, meal prep & packaging, reports, and a whole lot more.
As I’ve helped a bit to provide coverage for other positions, I’m constantly reminded how very complicated and difficult every job here is . . . and how easy it is to make a mistake! Our staff members truly become masters of their positions, and even our folks who are still new to us seem to learn a million new skills incredibly quickly. As always, I’m just grateful to work with such dedicated and skilled coworkers.
I’m also grateful for the wonderful folks we serve. We all love meeting our seniors, and we consider it a privilege to serve and share time with them. As we look to the new month, I want to wish all our seniors, volunteers, and staff a wonderful and safe Independence Day!
