Mayors Across America Deliver Meals to Seniors

Cutting ribbons. Kissing babies. Raising flags. Feeding seniors?

More than 1,200 American mayors left city halls Wednesday to deliver nutritious meals to seniors. The national effort was not a tasty new method of glad-handing, but rather the mayors' annual push to help the Meals on Wheels Association of America raise awareness of senior hunger.

Mayors for Meals, part of a monthlong campaign dubbed March for Meals, grew out of a local mayoral effort.

"We were in Ohio at the time and we were visiting one of our programs," Meals on Wheels president and CEO Enid Borden told AOL News. "She was telling us that all the mayors around here want to deliver a meal. That's kind of a neat thing. What if we do this nationwide?


"If we were lucky, we'd get 100 mayors. Now we're in our sixth year and we've got almost 1,300 of them delivering meals on one day."

Meals on Wheels operates via 5,000 Senior Nutrition Programs around the country and serves more than a million nutritious meals a day, many to seniors at home. The meals address the nutritional needs of seniors, while the volunteers delivering the meals provide housebound people with social interaction and a regular safety check.

"I can't tell you how many times we've heard about a Meals on Wheels volunteer not hearing anyone answering the door," Michael Flynn, Meals on Wheels director of communications, told AOL News. "They call the police or the fire department and find out that some emergency has happened."

Mayor Oscar Goodman, fourth-term leader of Las Vegas, delivered a meal Wednesday to a senior living downtown. Like Flynn, he emphasized that while nutrition is at the heart of Meals on Wheels, the program also provides seniors a much-needed and regular well-being check.

"It truly is a program that has an impact on our senior community, and it is not just providing meals," he told AOL News. "When these folks deliver the meals, they get a chance to speak to the seniors and see what other needs they may have."

Younger generations are also offering thanks to seniors when they provide meals, Borden said.

"What we're saying to these seniors is, 'You have raised us. You fought our wars. You tilled our soil. And now you're at a place in your life where things are tough. What we want to do is give you back your dignity, to give you the types of nutritious meals you've had all your life ... and to give you some friendship.'"

Borden hopes this year's Mayors for Meals will raise awareness at a time when the economy is faltering and the number of hungry seniors is rising. The gap between 1 million meals served a day by Meals on Wheels and 6 million seniors hungry a day stretches wide but, Borden points out, can be narrowed.

"Hunger is a disease, but it's the one disease that you and I can cure in our lifetime," she said. "We can cure the disease of hunger today. All we need to do is have the courage and commitment to do it."

Stepping in time with the mayors, the Walmart Foundation announced Wednesday a $5 million grant to the Meals on Wheels Association of America. The organization will use the money to create state-based coalitions of local affiliates, to start a new senior nutrition certificate program and to help local affiliates buy new equipment, such as stoves and delivery trucks.

To locate a Meals on Wheels program near you, to volunteer or to get help for yourself or a friend, visit Meals on Wheels' Find a Meal page online.

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