March 5-9 has been designated "Home Delivered Meals Week" to increase awareness of the program and to recognize volunteers who make the service possible. Pictured are (from left) Shirley Roos with Home Delivered Meals; Lorraine Klooster and Burdella De Jager, Retired Senior Volunteers, and Trudy Den Herder with Western Community Action. Kitchen help not pictured are Eleanor Johnson, RSVP, and Theresa Persing, Western Community Action.
At left, volunteers Bruce and Carol Boelman carry meals Monday to the Blue Mound Towers apartments next door to the Senior Dining Center. They, along with Louella Voigt and Marlene Wassenaar, served as the local volunteers that day for First Presbyterian Church. Local churches provide Home Delivered Meals volunteers for the program on a rotating basis. To receive home delivered meals, residents must be unable to come to the Senior Dining meal site.
Luverne Senior Dining Center, which prepares more than 150 meals per day, serves as the central kitchen for Luverne, Adrian and Worthington. About 35 meals are delivered Monday through Friday in Luverne, and Western Community Action employee Debi Scholten drives 35 to 40 to the Senior Center in Adrian and more than 40 to Sunshine Apartments in Worthington.
Home Delivered Meals receive support from participant contributions, local support from churches, civic clubs and the community Red Arrow Fund. The meals are made possible in part under a contract with the Southwest Area Agency on Aging as approved by the Minnesota Board on Aging.
Photos by Lori Ehde