Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
A trio of local celebrities tagged along to assist with some Lennox and Addington Seniors Outreach Services’ Meals on Wheels deliveries last Wednesday.
Greater Napanee mayor Gord Schermerhorn joined Greater Napanee Fire Services deputy chief John Koenig and public fire educator Randy Cook for their annual champions delivering meals campaign. Every March they call on well known faces from the community to assist with their deliveries as a way to raise awareness of their program.
“Some seniors might not know we’re here,” said Alison Holmes, L&A SOS’ meals on wheels coordinator. “Three days a week we deliver to Napanee.”
A typical week will see them providing 175-200 meals for local seniors. The meals are prepared on site inside the SOS kitchen.
The purpose of the meals on wheels program is to ensure seniors who may be homebound are still able to get a nutritious, warm meal. The volunteer drivers also serve the added function of checking up on seniors who may live alone. During last week’s deliveries, the firefighters took the opportunity to check up on the seniors’ smoke alarms as well to ensure they were in working order.
Holmes says the program is always in need of volunteer drivers who can assist with one of their routes on a given delivery day.
“There’s no commitment,” said Holmes. “You can do one day a week, you can do three days a week, you can do once a month. Whatever you can give. We’ve got about 40 volunteers. Some go away for the winter so we get as many as we can for that reason because we have five routes in Napanee, so we need five volunteers that day.”
They also make deliveries to Amherstview, Odessa, Bath and Deseronto.
Anyone interested in helping out or registering to receive meals on wheels can contact SOS at 613-354-6668 or e-mail info@lasos.ca.