Jul 3, 2008 5:25 pm US/Eastern
High Gas Prices Impact Meals On Wheels
BALTIMORE (WJZ) ―
Pain at the pump turns into even more pain for the Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland. Volunteers are dropping out because they can't afford to provide the wheels anymore.
Weijia Jiang reports this chapter of Meals on Wheels provides food for more than 3,000 people a year. But as the cost to get there goes up, the number of deliveries goes down.
The food is weighed out, organized neatly onto trays and bagged up into ready-to-eat meals.
Every day Meals on Wheels volunteers deliver the lunches to people across Central Maryland.
"There's a whole route of people that wouldn't get to eat, elderly people who can barely walk some of them, if we didn't deliver 'em," said Jaqueline Greff, Meals on Wheels volunteer.
There are some company vans, but a lot of the volunteers use their own cars and their own gas money.
"How do I fill up my tank and how do I get out there and do this? A volunteer is not making any money, so it does make a difference," said volunteer Dave Butz.
Every year the central Maryland chapter serves up 750,000 meals. But in 2007, 133 volunteers stopped helping. So far in 2008, 330 have already dropped out.
Organizers are also seeing fewer new volunteers sign up.
"The food we have delivered costs more, the food we try to deliver costs more, what we ask of our volunteers costs more. So it's impacting our whole mission dramatically," said Tom Grazio, Meals on Wheels executive director.
Still, the group manages to keep the meals coming. But until there's some relief at the pump, Meals on Wheels could turn into Meals on Feet, or even worse, Meals in Park.
Call 410-558-0827 for more information or click on the link at the top of the page.
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