Proud Partners in Serving Seniors
Project Open Hand and the City of Berkeley Team Up to Provide Meals to Seniors
Over 200 hot and nutritious meals are now being delivered directly from Project Open Hand's kitchen in Oakland to the homes of seniors enrolled in the City of Berkeley's Meals on Wheels program. It's a program that serves homebound seniors in Berkeley, Emeryville, and Albany, and Project Open Hand's role in cooking the meals marks an expansion from the agency's Senior Lunch Program.
Project Open Hand began providing meals for Meals on Wheels in August 2005. The prepared meals were brought to a distribution site, where volunteers picked them up and then delivered them to seniors. In a new arrangement that took effect this month, volunteers will go straight to Project Open Hand to pick up the hot meals.
It's a partnership that William Rogers, Senior Programs Administrator for the City of Berkeley, is excited about. With the meals being delivered directly from Project Open Hand, the quality of the meal service to Meals on Wheels participants will only go up. Brian Devine, Project Open Hand's East Bay Manager, is also optimistic. "It's all about providing the best possible service to seniors," he says. "Now the meals seniors receive reach them more quickly, the meals are hotter and taste fresher."
The partnering of government offices and non-profits has becoming increasingly common in recent years, as a way to confront complex problems in the community. As federal funding for social services continues to decline, local government and community organizations are challenged to provide the level of service expected of them on their own. Partnerships allow agencies to combine resources to better fulfill a mission - when it comes to feeding seniors who need the nutritional support of Meals on Wheels, Project Open Hand and the City of Berkeley welcome the opportunity to work together.
Making sure meals reach the people who need them takes a lot of work, and it couldn't be done without the compassionate dedication of volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering at Project Open Hand in the East Bay, please call (510) 596-8200. For more information about Meals on Wheels, please call (510) 981-5250.
Project Open Hand was founded in San Francisco in 1985 by Ruth Brinker, a retired food service manager, who began serving a nightly dinner to seven friends dying of AIDS. Project Open Hand began serving communities in the East Bay in 1989. Today, the agency provides 2,500 bags of groceries and over 11,000 meals each week to people in need in San Francisco and Alameda County. The first agency in the U.S. to provide home-delivered meals to people with HIV/AIDS, Project Open Hand has served as a model for 150 similar agencies throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Since 1985, Project Open Hand has served over ten million meals.
